Bawa, Geoffrey

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Bawa, Geoffrey (1919–2003). English-educated Sri Lankan architect and lawyer, he made his name with an architecture in which modern techniques and concerns were judiciously mixed with Sri Lankan vernacular themes. His own house in Colombo, an oasis of inward-looking peace within a noisy urban environment, was created around a series of courts, verandahs, and loggie, developed by linking four existing bungalows, and its tower afforded views over the rooftops of the city. The Ena da Silva house, Colombo, of 1962 was the first of Bawa's designs to fuse traditional Sinhalese domestic architecture with modern ideas of open planning, and showed how outdoor spaces could be enjoyed within confined urban plots. Among his other projects were the Bentota Beach Hotel (1969), the Parliament Building at Kotte (1979–82), the Triton Hotel, Ahungalla (1981), the Ruhuna University, Matara (1980–6), the Kandalama Hotel (1995), and the minimalist Jayawardene House (1999–2002) set on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Over half a century he created a series of episodes in a garden within a wilderness at Lunganga, Bentota.

Bibliography

Kalman (1994);
Khan (1995);
D. Robson (2002);
B. Taylor (1986)

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

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Bawa, Geoffrey

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