Geoffrey Bawa’s Sri Lanka: A Guide to the Buildings of Tropical Modernism

Geoffrey Bawa was born in Colombo in 1919 and died there in 2003. He is the best known architect Sri Lanka has produced, and among the most influential Asian architects of the twentieth century. The style associated with him is called tropical modernism. Much of what travellers now expect of a resort in the tropics, the lobby without walls, the view framed by columns, the pool that seems to run into the sea, can be traced to his work.

A late start

Bawa came to architecture late. He studied English at Cambridge and qualified as a barrister in London, practised law briefly in Colombo and gave it up to travel. In 1948 he bought a neglected rubber estate near the coast at Bentota, meaning to make a garden. He found he did not know how to build, and went back to London to study at the Architectural Association. He took his diploma in 1956 and returned to Sri Lanka to practise at the age of 38.

He began with white modern buildings of the European kind and found that they suited neither the monsoon nor the life of the island. He turned to what was already there: the courtyard houses of the Sinhalese and the Dutch, the deep tiled roofs and verandas of colonial bungalows, the tanks and water gardens of the ancient cities. He combined these with a modern freedom of plan. In his buildings the line between inside and outside is hard to find.

What to see

Lunuganga, Bentota. The garden he worked on for fifty years, from 1948 to 1998, is his most personal work. It is a sequence of terraces, lawns, pavilions and long views across a lake, composed like a painting and still being adjusted when he died. It is open for guided tours, and a few rooms in the house and garden pavilions are let to guests.

Number 11, Colombo. His town house, at the end of a lane off Bagatelle Road, was made by joining four small bungalows into a labyrinth of rooms and tiny courtyards. It is shown by appointment through the Geoffrey Bawa Trust. His former office nearby is now the Gallery Café.

Seema Malaka, Colombo. A small Buddhist temple on three platforms floating on Beira Lake.

Parliament, Kotte. His largest commission, completed in 1982, is a group of copper-roofed pavilions on an island in a man-made lake outside Colombo. It is seen from the shore.

Heritance Kandalama, near Dambulla. Built between 1991 and 1994, this hotel is a kilometre long and is set against a rock face above a reservoir, with a view to Sigiriya. It was designed to be overgrown, and the forest now covers it. It was the first hotel outside the United States to receive LEED certification.

Jetwing Lighthouse, Galle. His last major hotel, of 1997, stands on a rocky headland. Its entrance stair spirals up around a sculpture of the Portuguese landing by the artist Laki Senanayake.

Earlier hotels on the south-west coast, including the Bentota Beach Hotel of 1969, set the pattern for the Asian resort. The university campus at Matara, on the south coast, is the grandest of his public works.

A route

A Bawa journey fits the usual circuit of the island. Begin in Colombo with Number 11 and the temple. Drive to the Cultural Triangle and stay at Kandalama. Continue to Kandy and into the hills, where the Pekoe Trail crosses the tea estates. Come down to Galle and the Lighthouse, and finish at Lunuganga, an hour and a half from the airport.

His influence

Bawa’s ideas were carried across the region by the architects who admired him. The Australian Kerry Hill, who worked in Sri Lanka early in his career, went on to design many of the Aman resorts; our article on Kerry Hill and Aman Tokyo describes his manner. The first Aman, Amanpuri in Phuket, belongs to the same family of buildings.