Everything about Geoffrey Bawa’s architecture is as if it has always been there – be it turning an abandoned rubber estate into an ever-evolving garden or a hotel in a virgin forest, where ancient rocks fit snugly into corridors and sneaky creepers wind around columns and make a building disappear. As the Sri Lankan architect’s work unfolds at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi, it is a captivating expression of how he viewed modernity, urban spaces and quality of life.
The exhibition Geoffrey Bawa: It is Essential to be There, is presented by NGMA, the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, the High Commission of Sri Lanka, New Delhi, with the Geoffrey Bawa Trust Colombo. This is the first time that Bawa’s work is being showcased in India, which includes drawings, photographs, videos from the Bawa archives, his unbuilt work and photographs from his travels. The show, which closes on May 7, includes his projects in different parts of the world, including India.
Born in Colombo in 1919, with European, Sinhalese, German and Scottish blood, Bawa took to studying law at Cambridge in the 30s, perhaps because his father was already a wealthy lawyer. But he soon gave that up to pursue architecture. By this time Sri Lanka had won its independence in 1948 and Bawa found his way home. He had previously bought a 25-acre property near the south coast, at Bentota, which would become his canvas, his drawing board, his laboratory for the next 50 years, as an architect.
He called the site Lunuganga (salt river), where he experimented with landscape and form, cutting down trees and mountains to open vistas, patterning rice paddy fields in a way that it looked like a painting, positioning pavilions around the property so that you chased the sun through the day. While this was his personal space while he was alive, after his passing in 2003, it has been opened up for stay and tours.
Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet Michael Ondaatje had a friend tell him once: “In Sri Lanka, 90 percent of architecture is loitering”. Translate that into the art of slowing down, being mindful of place, playing that one alap on your sitar that one might recede into the moment. Bawa knew what that meant and though his work was decisive, be it for a school, a church, a college, a hotel or a garden, each of them lends a certain cadence to time, season, history and context. Known to be one of 20th century’s most prominent names in architecture, Bawa always said his buildings were meant to be experienced, not explained.
And this binary of being both modern and respecting the past, doing what he can to show the world how modern Sri Lanka could be, yet making each project a slice of his own journey is what makes Geoffrey Bawa’s architecture relevant in today’s time.
“He was happy to work in these nebulous territories, not wanting to be pigeon-holed. He was always looking at the broader complexities, multifaceted aspects of people, places and history,” says Shayari De Silva, curator, Geoffrey Bawa Trust. She takes us through his various projects, one of first being the Ena De Silva house (1960-62).
Situated in a tight, highly dense neighbourhood, Bawa moved away from the typical bungalow idea, and turned the house inward, placing the courtyard as a central element, around which the house was built. Shayari talks about how traditional courtyards were a bit lower so one had to step down, while Bawa gave it a new idiom by making it a contiguous space such that it became seamless with the indoors. This is an element adopted in many Sri Lankan houses and buildings even today.
Sitting on the side of this project is one of his last residences done for Pradeep Jayawardene (1997-98), which sits on the top of a cliff. All one sees is a large roof, the sky and the sea. With other rooms partly sunken, Bawa ensured the architecture didn’t get in the way of the view.
Bawa, who began his practice at the age of 38 under the Colombo-based architectural firm Edwards, Reid and Begg, grew to become South Asia’s leading names, both for his innovative and intuitive approach to space. By 1956, Bawa had just returned from London, after his studies at the Architectural Association. Ideas of modernism had flooded design schools and minds, and reinforced concrete, steel and glass was entering every building in different parts of the world.
Bawa, too, adopted these ideas into classrooms at S. Thomas School (1958-62) on Galle Road. As it was next to the sea, very soon the steel was corroding and the building began to leak. Bawa learnt then that such architecture would fail utterly in Sri Lanka’s tropical climes. He turned his attention to indigenous ways of building. He began tweaking modernist ideas – roofs were pitched to let out the hot air and make it climate appropriate, balconies and low walls came in to allow for cross breeze, even wood from the ubiquitous coconut tree was used for columns.
It was also the time Bawa began collaborations with other artists, including Ena, a textile artist, who was also his first client, designer-entrepreneur Barbara Sansoni, who became life-long collaborator with her textile company, Barefoot and sculptor-painter Laki Senananyake. Together they would work on multiple projects, using local materials and craft, pioneering Sri Lanka’s post-colonial renaissance.
Given the island country’s vibrant scenery, he used every opportunity to turn the eye to the stillness of the water, the bareness of a tree trunk or the coarseness of an ancient boulder. One such project was the Heritance Kandalama hotel (1991-94). Located within one of Sri Lanka’s most-visited pilgrimage sites, in Damulla, it was possibly the first built structure to be planned within its virgin forests. The local community was up in arms, their protests made it to national television. It deeply troubled Bawa and his associates who wanted to be mindful of the mood of the place. Keeping to a simple grid, the building brought the outside in, used recycled materials and honoured the forest undergrowth by lifting the building off the ground.
The project asked the architects relevant questions on building responsibly and brought into action tree-saving society and stricter environmental assessment policies. Today, Bawa’s vision of the building, being complete when the jungle takes over, has pretty much come true. The structure is almost invisible and what one sees are green vertical pathways. It’s a quiet testimony to how Bawa built – without ever calling attention to itself.
- Indian Express