BAWA HOUSE


Tropical modernism is something of an oxymoron: lush, organic forms colliding with the rigour of minimal geometry. It was the genius of Geoffrey Manning Bawa to unite these contradictory aesthetics in the houses and hotels that he designed in his native Sri Lanka, buildings that went on to influence contemporary architecture across tropical Asia.


Broad, shade-giving roofs, cool central courtyards, dark wood against white walls and terraces and verandas open to the breeze are all characteristics that spring to mind when picturing the kind of sophisticated Asian architecture used for eco-lodges, boutique hotels and private retreats. Yet this now ubiquitous architectural language and choice of materials was a novelty when Bawa, who died in 2003, began work with the firm of Edwards Reid and Begg in Colombo in 1957.


Bawa had come to architecture late in his career. The son of Anglo-Sri Lankan parents, he had studied at Cambridge before qualifying as a lawyer in London. In 1948, he returned to Sri Lanka where he bought an abandoned rubber plantation near Bentota called Lunuganga. The Lunuganga estate, which remained his lifelong home, sparked his interest in gardening and garden design, which led to his absorption in architecture.


Bawa returned to London and from 1954 to 1957 studied at the Architectural Association, graduating at the grand age of 38. While at the AA, he was influenced by the ideas of


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Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, whose work in West Africa showed how architecture could follow modernist principles yet remain sympathetic to its location.


When Bawa designed the ASH de Silva House in 1959, one of relatively few of his designs to have survived intact, he made a feature of the long, sweeping roof line, which offers protection from sun and rain. Inside, the simple white walls chimed more with his modernist leanings. Yet where modernism would have demanded large, glazed windows, Bawa left the interior walls open to the courtyard to allow the flow of light and breeze.


The same principles applied to the Ena de Silva House, 1960, in the Colombo suburb of Cinnamon Gardens where pavilions and verandas set around a central, open-plan courtyard were contained within a perimeter wall. With the use of natural materials such as granite paving, satin-wood columns and timber- latticed windows, the feeling of being inside and out at the same time pervaded the design and clearly referenced traditional Sri Lankan manor houses.


As Colombo grew and prospered, so the fashion for English-style bungalows set in ample gardens became impractical. Smaller plot sizes required houses that made more efficient use of the land and were more inward-looking for privacy, in contrast to the outward-facing bungalow pattern. Bawa designed around internal courtyards, using wooden window trellises for ventilation


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