Geoffrey Bawa


Geoffrey Manning Bawa, FRIBA was a Sri Lankan architect. He was among the most influential Asian architects of his generation. He is the principal force behind what is today known globally as "tropical modernism".
"It's no exaggeration to say that architect Geoffrey Bawa transformed the look of South-East Asia. And yet what he did is so subtle that we almost take it for granted today. In short, Bawa-tailored modern buildings to a specific environment. It hardly seems revolutionary and yet no one else had done anything like it in the region."

Early life

Geoffrey Bawa was born in Colombo on 23 July 1919, the youngest of two sons to Justice Benjamin William Bawa, a wealthy and successful Muslim lawyer of Sri Lankan and European parentage, and Bertha Marianne née Schrader, of mixed German, Scottish and Sinhalese descent. His older brother, Bevis, became a renowned landscape architect.

Education

He was educated at Royal College, Colombo after which he studied English and Law, 1938, at St Catharine's College, Cambridge gaining a BA and went on to study law at Middle Temple, London becoming a Barrister in 1944. Returning to Ceylon, after World War II, he worked for a Colombo law firm. After the death of his mother, he left the profession and soon left in 1946 to travel for two years, going to the Far East, across the United States, and finally to Europe and almost settling in Italy. By the time he was 28 years old, he had spent a third of his life away from Sri Lanka. During his time in Italy, he planned to buy a villa and settle down, but that did not happen, and by 1948 he had returned to Sri Lanka. Bawa bought an abandoned rubber estate on the south-west coast of the island between Colombo and Galle at Lunuganga, planning to create an Italian garden from a tropical wilderness. However, he soon found that his ideas were compromised by his lack of technical knowledge. In 1951, he was apprenticed to H. H. Reid, the sole surviving partner of the Colombo architectural practice Edwards, Reid and Begg. In 1952 Reid died, but Bawa still aspired to a career in architecture, so he returned to England, after spending a year at Cambridge, he enrolled as a student at the Architectural Association in London. There he gained a Diploma in Architecture by 1956 and in the following year he became an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects. To this day he is remembered as the tallest, oldest, and most outspoken student of his generation at AA. In 1957, at the age of 38 he returned to Sri Lanka qualified as an architect to take over what was left of Reid's practice.

Career in architecture

Returning to Ceylon, he became a partner of Messrs. Edwards, Reid and Begg, Colombo in 1958. In 1959, Danish architect Ulrik Plesner joined the firm, and the two designed many buildings together in their distinct style, sometimes called "tropical modernism."
Like the Maurice Talvande, Count de Mauny Talvande at Taprobane Island, the impetus for much of their work was the desire to create private arcadias within it. Bawa's architecture is at one with the land: inside and outside blend seamlessly, and it is designed for the maximum pleasure of its inhabitants. He was influenced by colonial and traditional Ceylonese architecture, and the role of water in it, but rejected both the idea of regionalism and the imposition of preconceived forms onto a site.
"Bawa's portfolio of work included religious, social, cultural, educational, governmental, commercial and residential buildings, and in each of these areas he established a canon of new prototypes. Early experiments in what was known as tropical modernism were tempered by a growing interest in the traditional architecture and building materials of Sri Lanka.
This led to the development of an architecture that was a blend of both modern and traditional, of east and west, of formal and picturesque, that broke down the barriers between inside and outside, between building and landscape, and that offered a blueprint for new ways to live and work in a tropical city."
Plesner left the island in 1967. Bawa became an Associate of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects in 1960. An ensuing close association with a coterie of like-minded artists and designers, including Ena de Silva, Barbara Sansoni and Laki Senanayake, produced a new awareness of indigenous materials and crafts, leading to a post-colonial renaissance of culture.

Influence

Geoffrey Bawa influenced a generation of architects in Sri Lanka after him, but his legacy was also embraced in Asia and around the world. He has influenced many architects worldwide including Singapore-based Australian architect Kerry Hill.

List of works

Geoffrey Bawa's work was mainly in Sri Lanka, but included several other countries as well: nine times in India, three times in Indonesia, twice in Mauritius and once in Japan, Pakistan, Fiji, Egypt and Singapore. His works include houses, hotels, schools, clubs, offices and government buildings, most notably the Sri Lankan Parliament Building. Today, the Gallery Café on Paradise Road in Colombo is located in Bawa's former office building.
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Awards and fellowships