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Geoffrey Bawa

Overview for Instructors

Geoffrey Bawa (1919-2003) originally trained as a lawyer before turning to architecture in his late thirties. Wishing to convert a rubber estate on the southern coast of Sri Lanka into a personal home and rambling garden (Lunuganga), but finding himself without the necessary skills to do so, he enrolled in the Architectural Association, qualifying in 1957 at the age of 38. On returning to Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, he became a partner at the architectural firm Edwards, Reid, and Begg, later taking over the practice. His working partnership from 1961 to 1967 with Danish architect Ulrik Plesner, who originally arrived at the island to work with Minnette de Silva, resulted in a slew of captivating works that synthesized elements of older forms of architecture with new techniques and materials. Bawa’s mixed heritage and elite social connections alike informed his work. Ambivalent about settling in Sri Lanka as a young man, he began the process of purchasing a property in Italy to develop before changing his plans to acquire Lunuganga. Throughout his life, he drew as liberally on inspiration gleaned from his travels as he did from Sri Lanka influences. While Bawa’s flair for spatial design is undeniable, many early projects were commissioned by prominently placed family friends and associates, securing the fledging architect vital recognition for future commissions. Bawa is often paired with other so-called critical regionalists who resist the placelessness of the International Style; critical regionalism itself can be placed in any conversations on tropical modernism, which sought to distil a “timeless,” climatically-responsive architecture and was largely refined in Britain’s former colonies. But Bawa’s refusal to discuss his work in theoretical and methodological terms is both a boon and a bane; scholars parsing his work have interpreted and extrapolated his body of work in quite diverging ways. Students should feel encouraged to be equally confident in reading what they see in the visual and written material they encounter and coming to their own conclusions. For students seeking greater familiarity with the Sri Lankan precedents informing Bawa’s work, the second chapter in Robson’s Complete Works offers a clear and succinct narrative of two millennia of the history of building on the island.

Bibliography

Bawa, Geoffrey, Christoph Bon, and Dominic Sansoni. Lunuganga. Singapore: Times Editions, 1990.

Jayewardene-Pillai, Shanti. Geoffrey Manning Bawa: Decolonizing Architecture. Colombo: The National Trust, 2017.

Jazeel, Tariq. Sacred Modernity: Nature, Environment and the Postcolonial Geographies of Sri Lankan Nationhood. Liverpool University Press, 2013.

Jones, Robin. “Memory, Modernity and History: the Landscapes of Geoffrey Bawa in Sri Lanka, 1948-1998.”Contemporary South Asia. 19.1 (2011): 9-24.

Robson, David G. Geoffrey Bawa: The Complete Works. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 2002.

____. “Court and Verandah: The Architecture of Geoffrey Bawa.” Lecture at the AA School of Architecture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnQmR31A90c

Robson, David G., and Dominic Sansoni. Bawa: The Sri Lanka Gardens. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 2009.

Taylor, Brian B, et al. Geoffrey Bawa. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 1995.

Vale, Lawrence J. Architecture, Power, and National Identity. London: Routledge, 2008.

Case Studies for Class Discussion

1/ Environment and Landscape

  • S. Thomas’ Preparatory School (1957-64). Complete Works, 66.
  • Bishop’s College (1960-63). Complete Works, 67.
  • A.S.H. de Silva House (1959-60). Complete Works, 71-73.
  • Osmund and Ena de Silva House (1960-62). Complete Works, 74-83; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 46-49.
  • Polontalawa Estate Bungalow (1963-65). Complete Works, 93.
  • Bentota Beach Hotel (1967-69). Complete Works, 96-101; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 126-131.
  • State Mortgage Bank (1976-78). Complete Works, 134-135.
  • University of Ruhuna (1980-88). Complete Works, 158-163; Geoffrey Manning Bawa, 174-187; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 96-112.
  • Triton Hotel (1979-81). Complete Works, 164-167; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 140-149.
  •  For further commentary on the relationship between rain and maintenance, see Architecture and Nationalism in Sri Lanka, 209.
  • New Parliament (1979-82). Complete Works, 146-155; Architecture, Power, and National Identity, Chapter 7, 226-247; Geoffrey Manning Bawa, 148-173; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 164-171.
  • Kandalama Hotel(1991-94). Complete Works, 200-209; Geoffrey Manning Bawa, 188-215; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 174-177.
  • Lunuganga (1994-98). Complete Works, 238-259; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 19-44. See also Lunuganga.

Sweeping roofs, inward-looking internal courtyards, and buildings imagined as a series of linked floating pavilions are clearly recognizable components of Bawa’s work, and he spent a large part of his career experimenting with and refining these forms. While Bawa’s early works with Ulrik Plesner were stark white cubes with brise-soleil façades (see buildings for secondary schools S. Thomas’ Preparatory School and Bishop’s College) recognizably emulated the International Style, the two soon acknowledged that these forms were not well suited to Sri Lanka’s humid monsoonal climate.

St. Thomas’ Preparatory School (courtesy of the Geoffry Bawa Trust).

In search of a climatically optimal functionalist architecture, they eventually drew inspiration from and riffed on the traditional pitched roof with overhanging eaves which reduced solar gain while also offering ample protection from the rain. He often reiterated that the environment was a feature to be incorporated into, not expunged from, habitation. He quickly incorporated courtyards into his projects (see A.S.H. de Silva house) and just as quickly began to refine his ideas (see Osmund and Ena de Silva house), translating the traditional Kandyan courtyard house for an urban context. Drawing on the tradition of Sri Lankan cave temples, he incorporated the boulders on site into the design of the Polontalawa estate bungalow. Boulders and courtyards also feature prominently in his hotel designs, such as the Bentota Beach Hotel (Sri Lanka’s first resort hotel) and Kandalama Hotel. Even his tower design for the State Mortgage Bank, albeit a departure from his previous work, was praised as being extraordinarily bioclimatically responsive; he also eschewed the use of air-conditioning for as long as possible, although he was ultimately stymied by insistent hotel developers. Having invited the outside environment into his works by means of open corridors and courtyards, Bawa also took unmitigated pleasure in seeing the elements invade. For more than one project, he flooded the valleys on site to create water features, such as in the case of the University of Ruhuna campus and the Parliament complex (and in the case of the latter, also incorporated his floating pavilion design for the Seema Malakatemple). In a 1985 public talk he gave in Dhaka, he noted gleefully how driving monsoon rain blowing through the open lobby of the Triton Hotel caused vacationers to scatter like ants. He was also indifferent to the quantity of labor required to maintain his porous buildings, focusing intently on designing buildings that heightened the experiential effects of the surrounding landscape, whether they be agreeable or ill-pleasing. Bawa’s approach to environmentalism is not straightforward to grasp. How do we interpret the issue of sustainability in his work in general, given his careful attention to materials and site yet failure to acknowledge the labor of maintenance? The Kandalama Hotel is a critical case in point: construction was mired in protests from environmentalists for fear that its design would threaten the catchment area of the Kandalama reservoir, yet it was the first building outside the United States to receive LEED certification upon being constructed for its approach to landscaping and water use, but continues to require labor-intensive practices of upkeep. Lunuganga is another case that highlights the tension between the landscape and those who labor on it, with its exquisite landscaping that is the epitome of architecture as experience for Bawa and his guests. A distinctive part of the design is the inclusion of fourteen bells in different parts of the garden, to indicate his location to staff and to summon them accordingly.

2/ Synthesizing Time in Space

  • St Bridget’s Montessori School (1963-64). Complete Works, 68-69; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 82-83.
  • A.S.H. de Silva House (1959-60). Complete Works, 71-73.
  • Osmund and Ena de Silva House (1960-62). Complete Works, 74-83; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 46-49.
  • House for Dr Bartholomeusz, later ER&B offices, now Paradise Road Gallery Café (1961-63). Complete Works, 84-87;Architecture and Nationalism in Sri Lanka, 145-146; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 114-119.
  • Pallekelle Industrial Estate (1970-71). Complete Works, 131.
  • New Parliament (1979-82). Complete Works, 146-155; Architecture, Power, and National Identity, Chapter 7, 226-247; Geoffrey Manning Bawa, 148-173; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 164-171.

Geoffrey Bawa has been variously pegged as vernacularist, functionalist, and a critical regionalist for his approach to building, in large part because he drew inspiration from such varied sources, both temporally and geographically. Bawa himself resisted being associated with any monikers, displaying an obdurate unwillingness to describe his work in theoretical terms, and his later projects constitute of marked shift from his earlier work. Scholars of his work seeking to categorize him, then, are compelled to look closely at his work, parse the abstract interpretations of the eclectic sources he draws inspiration from, and make a pronouncement. Bawa’s dramatic roofs, reminiscent of a much older style of building, are a distinct feature of his oeuvre. While ostensibly antithetical to the flat-roofed International Style, the environmental benefits they provide (see previous section) enabled Bawa to lean into modernist approaches to space, including the open plan and blurred boundary between interior and exterior. He experimented with earth-covered flat roofs, corrugated cement sheeting, and various types of roofing tiles before arriving at his signature use of half round Portuguese tiles laid on corrugated cement sheeting, which he had the opportunity to test this idea in the design of a house for a Dr. Bartholomeusz (upon the project’s being cancelled, he converted the house into the office for his studio practice).

Plan for the Alfred House Office (courtesy of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust)

The current Gallery Café (photos by Phusathi Liyanaarachchi)

It is also worth comparing Bawa’s ambivalent footing between past and future with the practices of Minnette de Silva and Valentine Gunasekara. For instance, de Silva was vocally political and deeply committed to creatively reinterpreting ancient traditions for modern use. She pioneered the use of forms so integral to Bawa’s work—indoor courtyards, pitched roofs, and verandas that drew on Kandyan and Dutch building traditions, inventive use of local materials, and using traditionally sacred architecture to inspire modern secular design—yet Bawa’s refinement of these innovations and subsequent rise in prominence means that he is often credited entirely for these innovations. Bawa’s use of local construction materials including brick, timber, clay tile, and plaster, also align him with de Silva while contrasting with Gunasekara’s use of concrete which relied on imported materials. Bawa’s design for a house for Osmund and Ena de Silva brings to life Ena de Silva’s clear vision for the family home, incorporating both Kandyan features like enclosing walls, open-sided rooms, verandas, courtyards, and shrine room, and modern features including an office for her husband, studio for her son, and guest wing, and clearly refines ideas that Bawa incorporated into the A.S.H. de Silva house. Bawa’s design for a Department of Industries estate similarly synthesized traditional elements, in its resemblance to traditional Buddhist teaching halls, while fulfilling a contemporary commercial purpose.

Bawa’s design for the new Parliament building is a good case study for teasing out the relationships between tradition and modernity in building a national identity. The Parliament was commissioned in 1978 by newly elected President J.R. Jayewardene, the leader of a center-right party who had just come into power, putting an end to a seven-year socialist experiment in self-sufficiency and closed economy.It was to be built in Sri Jayewardenapura Kotte, an undeveloped site a few miles east of Colombo, and was to be the first of many administrative buildings that would eventually be shifted eastward. It is difficult to tell what primary reasons drove President Jayewardene’s decision: the fortuitous connection to his name, or the fact that Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte served as a 14th century capital city, or the fact that Colombo, a coastal capital, was small and extremely congested. The larger administrative move was never realized in its entirety, but the Parliament itself was completed on schedule. Bawa proposed the flooding of a marshy river valley to create a lake that the Parliament buildings could float above as a series of connected pavilions,which is interpreted as referencing Sri Lanka’s two millennia-long history of building artificial lakes for irrigating rice fields. However, the buildings have also been compared to Moghul lake palaces, South Indian temples, and Chinese palaces, creating a form that could be read as timelessly Sri Lankan, or global in outlook.The one element definitively hailed as Sri Lankan is the sweeping-pitched roof, but the use of copper rather than tiles gave it a thin tent-like quality, hovering over more abstract formal spaces below. The debating chamber identifiably echoes the Audience Hall in Kandy, which in turn derives from King Parakramabahu’s (r. 1153-1186) council chamber. How does Bawa’s eclecticism compare with the earlier buildings for the University of Peradeniya campus (1952) or the Independence Memorial (1953) by a Public Works Department team led by architect Neville Wynne-Jones? (For more on these buildings, see Architecture and Nationalism in Sri Lanka, 109-118). Does Bawa’s eclectic use of source material make him a modernist or a post-modernist? How does he resist the individualism of post-modernism while complicating common interpretations of modernism?

Caption: Ekala Industrial Estate (courtesy of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust)

3/ Constraint and Creativity

How do architects think through the process of design and construction? Geoffrey Bawa’s use of drawing for thinking, and improvisatory gestures on site to make changes to the final design might be instructively compared with Valentine Gunasekara’s meticulous model-making and drawing annotations in the Sinhala language for ease of reading for his contractors. Bawa produced no models for the Good Shepherd Farm School; he sketched incredibly detailed, multi-layered plans and sections that displayed his spatial intelligence. For the Polontalawa Estate Bungalow, the plan was sketched out roughly, but then drawn out through gestured commands to the contractor on site. For the University of Ruhuna, it was up to job architect Nihal Bodhinayake to translate Bawa’s vision into the language of the building contractor through the establishment of an on-site grid that fixed the buildings on a system of coordinates (which Bawa agreed to but overrode when he deemed it necessary). Working with Japanese construction firm for the new Parliament, however, Bawa was constrained by tight schedules and the inability to make significant changes to the design on site. Socio-economic conditions in Sri Lanka during the time that Bawa practiced also informed the relationship between constraint and creativity, giving rise to a localized aesthetic informed by import restrictions and material scarcity. In addition to the inventive use of locally sourced materials, artist Laki Senanayake fulfilled Bawa’s vision for a pool lined with blue glazed tiles in the A.S.H. de Silva house by using broken blue Milk of Magnesia bottles. Meanwhile, for the Osmund and Ena de Silva House, Bawa convinced local craftspeople to reproduce contemporary furniture designs and fittings. How does Bawa’s relationship to other actors in fulfilling creative visions compare to other design practices, in history and at present?

At times, Bawa’s inventiveness in the face of constraint served as a form of wry social commentary. He experimented with a stacked tower house for saving space when designing a home for Pieter Keuneman, who as housing minister had introduced a new law that limited the floor area of new private housing to 90m2. The area of Keuneman’s own house came to about 300m2, but could be passed off as a much smaller house by excluding areas like open verandas, garage, and staff quarters, exposing—as Bawa delighted in pointing out—the minister’s own hypocrisy. Bawa refined this stacked tower concept in other designs (for his own house at 33rd Lane, the Martenstyn House, and the de Soysa House) but also circumvented the law’s restrictions in his designs for future clients. How are socio-economic conditions in Sri Lanka revealed through Bawa’s work, and how does this compare with the work of de Silva or Gunasekara?

4/ Authorship and Collaboration

  • Bentota Beach Hotel (1967-69). Complete Works, 96-101; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 126-131.
  • Ceylon Pavilion (1969-70). Complete Works, 107.
  • New Parliament (1979-82). Complete Works, 146-155.
  • Kandalama Hotel (1991-94). Complete Works, 200-209; Geoffrey Manning Bawa, 188-215; Geoffrey Bawa (“White Book”), 174-177.
  • Lighthouse Hotel (1995-97). Complete Works, 212-215.

Integral to the spatial experience of Bawa’s buildings are the design elements created by his artistic collaborators: Laki Senanayake’s sculptural owl hovering over the staircase at the Kandalama Hotel, or twisting warring figures incorporated into the handrail at the Lighthouse Hotel; Ena de Silva’s batiks adorning the ceiling of the Bentota Beach Hotel’s lobby or flags fluttering outside the new Parliament; Barbara Sansoni’s distinctive handloom fabrics imbuing the Bentota hotel’s dining areas and lounges with warm color; the list goes on. While a few projects are listed here, it is instructive to pay attention to Bawa’s collaborations across most of his projects. Bawa was a savvy connoisseur who worked closely with a tightly-knit coterie of local design elite to produce a coherent style that continues to be reinterpreted (and uncritically imitated) by designers today. Yet Bawa also infamously provided meagre compensation for work, as recalled by Ismeth Raheem when working on an ultimately unbuilt hotel project in Madras. He also did not always fully credit his co-designers with authorship, a source of tension between him and Ulrik Plesner. How do Bawa’s collaborative practices compare with those of de Silva and Gunasekara? How do we reconcile the synthesis of collaboration demonstrated in the design of the Bentota Beach Hotel, for instance, with the fact that many of his designers were compelled to operate a second practice to make ends meet (and eventually left the office altogether)? Moreover, how do Bawa’s attitudes to labor reflect or diverge from architectural practice today?