Before completing his architectural training in 1957, at the age of 38, Geoffrey Bawa dreamed of transforming the overgrown tropical world of his native Sri Lanka into a stylized Med-iterranean retreat. Though he would return to this vision later in life, composing for himself a Palladian garden compound on an abandoned rubber plantation outside Bentota, Bawa was quick to learn that working with the landscape—–not forcing it to become something it was not—–was often a more appropriate strategy of design.
Bawa was born in 1919 in Sri Lanka, which the British then called Ceylon, to wealthy parents of European and Ceylonese descent. He was destined to spend much of his life moving back and forth between London and Sri Lanka, and this ceaseless transit between two competing origins was to have a marked effect on Bawa’s work. Was he “a European with Ceylonese connections,” author David Robson asks in his 2002 book, Geoffrey Bawa: The Complete Works,“or a Ceylonese who happened to have some Euro-pean blood in his veins?”
It would be wrong to imply, however, that Bawa lived his life in a state of creative exile. His ability to pass back and forth between England and Sri Lanka was, in fact, a privilege, and this lack of clear affiliation with either country gave him beneficial access to a variety of social situations. These laminations of geography and culture eventually became a defining characteristic of Bawa’s mature architectural style: Behind the ordered facades of his buildings we find vibrant courtyards and breezeways in which flowering plants and heavy vegetation thrive. Trees grow up to and beyond roof level. Pools shimmer in the afternoon sunlight. The tropics extend inside the structures, giving shape to what Robson calls Tropical Modernism.
Bawa applied the design training he received from London’s Architec-tural Association to the Sri Lankan climate and topography. He developed a number of innovative solutions, such as deeply cantilevered roofscapes, verandas, removable screens, and galleries, to the problems of humidity, monsoon rains, heat, and internal airflow. For instance, the administrative building Bawa designed for the Steel Corporation (1966–69) has a gridded exterior made from precast concrete, allowing cross breezes to pass into the structure. The building itself, meanwhile, is a peninsula, extending out into a reservoir for the nearby steel-rolling mill. It seems to owe as much to Sigfried Giedion as to the region’s historical building styles.
But not all was modernist grids with Bawa. The St. Bridget’s Montessori School in Colombo (1963–64), built for nuns, playfully reinvents the convent experience through a Gaudíesque vocabulary of rounded edges. At times resembling biological forms, with its droopy windowsills and curved concrete stairs, the school was colored in a soft palette of earth tones just this side of pastel. Meanwhile, the bungalow at Polontalawa (1963–65) structurally incorporates enormous boulders that the architect left undisturbed. These geological intrusions bring the site’s topography literally inside the house, like gigantic and wonderfully abstract pieces of earthly furniture.
One of Bawa’s most fascinating and frustrating projects, though, was the Sri Lankan parliamentary complex at Kotte (1979–82). There he was called upon to articulate a vision for the future of Sri Lanka—–and to do so through a work of monumental architecture. Bawa’s Parliament stands brooding and precise on a partly artificial island in the midst of former marshland—–and it is truly gigantic, encompassing more than 400,000 square feet of space. The complex is really a series of asymmetrically arranged pavilions, with broad sloping roofs, grouped around green space and open piazzas. If the Parliament’s external appearance is reserved—–even semi-monastic—–then its central debating chamber is simply breathtaking, complete with bronze and silver doors, wood-paneled walls, a shining, aluminum-clad ceiling, and banners by Ena de Silva.
Sadly, the complex also represents something of a political tragedy: In 1983, only one year after the project’s completion, Sri Lanka descended into civil war—–an armed conflict that continues to this day. Standing on its island podium, Bawa’s Parliament has taken on “a fortress-like air,” Robson writes. After 25 years of war, the building is now more like “a Parliament under siege: the lawns are empty and the lakeside pavilions are used by armed sentries. In another time, perhaps, when peace and communal harmony prevail, the terraces, gardens and pavilions will be thrown open to the people and the Parliament might finally become what it was intended to be: the expression of many different but overlapping cultures and traditions and a symbol of open, accessible and democratic government.”
Bawa’s legacy may now be receiving increased attention, but it remains to be fully rediscovered. Too modest for today’s architecture culture, Bawa’s work sits in the south Asian humidity, awaiting its future audience.
2 / In 2001, Bawa won the Aga Khan Chairman’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in architecture, just two years before his death.
3 / The ceiling of the main parliamentary chamber at Kotte is structurally modeled after a silver chain-link purse owned by Bawa’s mother.
4 / When it came time to produce a book about Bawa’s work in the 1980s, researchers found that much of his early project documents had been eaten by white ants.
5 / Bawa had never washed his own clothes until a trip to Moscow, where he tried to clean his shirts by spraying them with water in the shower.
6 / Bawa had a thing for Rolls-Royces, and he owned at least four of them.
7 / When Bawa’s cousin Georgette came to visit him in Colombo, she was stopped at Customs for traveling with a large glass chandelier. She said she always traveled with a glass chandelier and she didn’t understand what the problem could be.
8 / Bawa named his home and garden complex Lunuganga, which means “salt river.”
9 / In 1988 Bawa’s good friend Ray Wijewardene came down to visit him at Lunuganga—–only to crash his microlight airplane into the roof of the main bungalow. He survived.
10 / Shortly before his death, Bawa was working on a design for the official residence of the Sri Lankan president. That project remains incomplete.
