Geoffrey Bawa

TROPICAL MODERNISM

B.V.ABHIRAM SEC-B SEM-6

INTRODUCTION
•Geoffrey Manning Bawa

•Born in 1919

•In 1938 Geoffrey went to Cambridge to read English and later studied Law in London.

•worked for some time in a Colombo law firm.

•Soon tired from the legal profession

•1948 he came to a temporary halt in Italy where, seduced by its Renaissance gardens

•He returned to Ceylon where he bought Lunuganga.

•Wanted to make Lunuganga an Italian garden but laid bare his lack of technical knowledge

•1951 he began a trial apprenticeship with Edwards, Reid and Begg.

•1953 he applied to the Architectural Association School in London.

•Finally qualified as an ARCHITECT in 1957 at the age of 38. 2

THE REASON

When Bawa came back to Ceylon in 1949, he became almost totally involved in the pleasures of
altering his house and transforming the rubber plantation into a wonderfully beautiful, rolling
landscape; staircased and terraced , squared into paddy fields, on the edge of a long lake with a
wild island in its centre. This he so enjoyed that he decided to become an ARCHITECT .

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 PRACTICE

• Geoffrey Bawa started in the firm of Edwards Reid and Begg.

• His fellow partners from 1959 to 1967 were Jimmy Nilgiria and Valentine Gunesekera. 

• The Danish architect Ulrik Plesner joined the practice in 1959 and worked as a close collaborator with Bawa until the end of
1966.

• After 1967 Bawa’s sole partner was Dr. K. Poologasundram who acted as engineer and office manager until the partnership
was dissolved in 1989.

• In 1990 Bawa founded ‘Geoffrey Bawa Associates’.

• Channa Daswatte acted as his principal associate from 1993 until 1998. 

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PHILOSOPHY

•Highly personal in his approach, evoking the

pleasures of the senses that go hand in hand with the
climate, landscape, and culture of ancient
Ceylon(Present day Sri Lanka).

•Brings together an appreciation of the Western

humanist tradition in architecture
•with needs and lifestyles of his own country.

•The principal force behind TROPICAL

MODERNISM.

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•Work with a sensitivity to site and context.

•His designs break down the barriers between inside and

outside, between interior design and landscape
architecture.

•He reduced buildings to a series of scenographically

conceived spaces separated by courtyards and gardens.

•His ideas are providing a bridge between the past and

the future, a mirror in
which ordinary people can obtain a clearer image of their
own evolving culture

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 GEOFFREY BAWA

33RD LANE HOUSE, COLOMBO, SRI LANKA

THE LUNUGANGA, BENTOTA, SRILANKA

RUHUNU UNIVERSITY, MANTARA, SRI LANKA7

LUNUGANGA, BENTOTA

Street Address Dedduwa Lake

Location Bentota, Sri Lanka
Architect/Planner Geoffrey Bawa
Date 1949-1998
Century 20th
Decade 1990s
Building Types landscape, residential
Building Usage garden, private residence

The creation of one man’s vision which, over 40 years,

was nurtured into a reality.  8
Then ..

•A small rubber plantation consisting of a house

and 25 acres of land

•A low hill planted with rubber and fruit trees and

coconut palms with rice fields.

•Surrounded by the Dedduwa lake.`

Now ..
The Italian inspired garden with spectacular views over lakes and tropical
jungle together with a simply designed plantation house

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 Geoffrey Bawa created this tropical garden
idyll. The Italian inspired gardens, with
spectacular views over the lake and tropical
jungle, has been transformed into a series of
outdoor rooms creating a huge feeling of
space with vistas that have been carefully
chosen to emphasize their beauty with points
of architecture and art; from entrances,
A garden is not a static object, it is a pavilions, broad walks to a multitude of
moving spectacle, a series of scenographic courtyards and pools.
images that change with the season, the
point of view, the time of day, the mood.
So Lunuganga has been conceived as a
series of separate contained spaces, to be
moved through at leisure or to be occupied
at certain times of the day.
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SITE PLAN

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PLANTATION HOUSE

•A collection of courtyards, verandahs and loggias create a haven of

peace and inspiration. 

•Suites are individual and beautifully decorated to provide a relaxing and

memorable environment.

STUDIO

•Set at the edge of a cinnamon plantation 

•high on the hill overlooking the lake to the south thus giving the privacy.

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SITE PLAN SHOWING LANDSCAPPING
This is not a garden of colorful
flowers, neat borders and
gurgling fountains:
it is a civilized wilderness, an
assemblage of tropical plants of
different scale and texture, a
composition of green on green,
an ever changing play of light
and shade, a succession of
hidden surprises and sudden
vistas, a landscape of memories
and ideas.

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Exterior view showing Aerial view showing Exterior view from
retaining wall's scalloped Exterior view showing
stepped walkway through the bottom of the hill
layout design dramatic plantings
garden to plantings
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 The entry steps up to the south terrace

Exterior view showing a figural

sculpture monumentally situated View from the sitting room across the north 15
terrace
 Exterior view of entrance to Exterior view through Interior view showing rustic
Exterior detail showing lattice foyer oversized door-frames seating area with views to
windows reinforced and supported by garden 16
central columns
Interior of the Pavilion on the Eastern
Terrace
Interior view showing linear forms of window
casings and furniture

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Exterior detail of staircase Exterior detail of carved wood Exterior detail of stairs cut Exterior detail of
pillar through landscape stepped walkway
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INFERENCES

2 substantial tree grow within house

"houses are inseparable from trees”

Open-to-sky bathroom with a tree

“we have traditionally lived outdoors”

Furnished in natural timber, simple white fabric, sturdy wrougt iron lighting fittings.
“A HOUSE IS A GARDEN”

This is a work of art, not of nature: it is the contrivance of a single mind

and a hundred pairs of hands working together with nature to produce
something that is 'supernatural'.

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RUHUNU UNIVERSITY, MANTARA

Street Address Ruhunu University

Location Matara, Sri Lanka

Architect/Planner Geoffrey Bawa

Client Ministry of Education

Date 1980-1988
Century 20th
Decade 1980s
Building Type Educational

Building Usage University

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•On the south coast near Matara

•covered an area of thirty hectares and

spanned across two hills with views
across a lake towards the southern ocean.

•The campus required 50, 000 square

metres of buildings to accommodate total
of 4,000 students.

•built by a Dutch contractors

•Took eight years to complete.

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SITE PLAN
DESIGN OF THE UNIVERSITY

Bawa’s design deployed over fifty

separate pavilions linked by a system
of covered loggias on a predominantly
orthogonal grid and used a limited
vocabulary of forms and materials
borrowed from the Porto-Sinhalese
building traditions of the late Medieval
Period, but it exploited the changing
topography of the site to create an ever
varying sequence of courts and
verandahs, vistas and closures. The
result was a modern campus, vast in
size but human in scale.

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MASSING

•Bawa placed the vice

chancellor's lodge and a guest Buildings were planned orthogonally
house on the western hill and on a north-south grid but were
flooded the intervening valley allowed to 'run with site'.
to create a buffer between the
road and the main campus. Natural features such as rocky
outcrops were incorporated into the
Central valley with library bases of buildings or became focal
•wrapped the buildings of the
science faculty around the features of the open spaces.
northern hill and those of the
arts faculty around the southern The limited architectural vocabulary
hill, using the depression clearly derives from Porto- Sinhalese
between them for the library traditions
and other central facilities.

Exterior view showing terraces and juxtaposition of

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buildings with each other and landscape
MASSING

•Pavilions, varying in scale and extent, •Views are carefully orchestrated in

are connected by covered links and a scenographic sequence that
separated by an ever-changing conceals and reveals in turn,
succession of garden courts. playing the northern views of
jungle and distant hills against the
•Everywhere there are places to pause southern views of the lake and the
and consider, to sit and contemplate, to Exterior view from street level showing use ocean beyond, always referring
of stone and concrete in façade
gather and discuss. back to the picturesque hump-
backed bridge that connects the
•The main routes either cut entrance across the lake to the
uncompromisingly across the contours central valley and acts as the
or meander horizontally along them. linchpin of the whole composition.

Exterior view to sprawling elevation 24

•Ruhunu is remarkable in that it is
composed from a series of fairly
simple and, in the main,
unremarkable buildings - about fifty
in total - all built with a limited
palette of materials and a limited
vocabulary of standard details.

•The construction is straightforward, Buildings are aligned carefully to

comprising walls of plastered brick
on a concrete frame and roofs of half-
round tile laid on corrugated cement
sheeting.
minimize solar intrusion and
mitigate the effects of the south-west
monsoon.
`
Few of the spaces are air-
conditioned and the buildings rely
for the most part on natural
ventilation.

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 Exterior view showing building's
wrapping terraces and position on a
hill

Exterior detail showing passage to

planted courtyard

Exterior view showing large

dimensions and triple story
covered entrance portico Exterior view of façade showing stilt
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support frame
33RD LANE HOUSE, COLOMBO, SRI LANKA

Variant Names Geoffrey Bawa's House

Street Address 33rd lane, Bagatelle Road

Location Colombo, Sri Lanka
Architect/Planner Geoffrey Bawa
Date 1960-1998
Century 20th
Decade 1960s
Building Type Residential
Building Usage Private residence

Adaptive re-use; courtyard

Keywords
house

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Elements salvaged from old buildings in Sri
Lanka and South India were artfully
incorporated into the evolving composition.

•1958 Bawa bought the third house in a row of

four small houses.

•He converted it into a pied-à-terre with living

room, bedroom, tiny kitchen and room for a
servant.

•After some time he bought the fourth and this

was colonized to serve as dining room and
second living room.

•Ten years later the remaining bungalows were

acquired and added into the composition and
the first in the row was converted into a four-
storey tower. •The house in 33rd Lane is an essay in architectural
bricolage.
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•Over a period of forty years the houses were subjected to continual change.

•Although the plan form of the whole might at each stage have been thought to be simply the result of an
arbitrary process of stripping away and adding, any accidental or picturesque quality has always been
tempered by a strong sense of order and composition.

• It was here that Bawa developed his interest in architectural bricolage.

GROUND
FLOOR PLAN
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 30
FIRST FLOOR PLAN SECOND FLOOR PLAN
 The main part of the house is an evocation of a lost world of verandahs and
courtyards assembled from a rich collection of traditional devices and plundered
artifacts and the new tower which rises above the car port rises from a shady
nether world to give views out across the treetops towards the sea

SECTION

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Door by Ismeth Ismeth Raheem Door to stairway Pool court with horse's head
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Carport and main corridor Sitting room and courtyard

The final result is an introspective labyrinth

of rooms and garden courts which together
create the illusion of limitless space. Words
like inside and outside lose all meaning:
here are rooms without roofs and roofs
without walls, all connected by a complex
matrix of axes and internal vistas.

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AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

Pan Pacific Citation, Hawaii Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (1967)

President, Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (1969)

Inaugural Gold Medal at the Silver Jubilee Celebration of the Sri Lanka Institute of
Architects (1982)

Heritage Award of Recognition, for “Outstanding Architectural Design in the Tradition of

Local Vernacular Architecture”, for the new Parliamentary Complex at Sri Jayawardenepura,
Kotte from the Pacific Area Travel Association. (1983)

Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects

Elected Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (1983)

Conferred title of Vidya Jothi (Light of Science) in the Inaugural Honours List of the
President of Sri Lanka (1985)

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Teaching Fellowship at the Aga Khan Programme for Architecture, at MIT, Boston ,
USA (1986)

Conferred title Deshamanya (Pride of the Nation) in the Honours List of the President
Sri Lanka (1993)

The Grate Master's Award 1996 incorporating South Asian Architecture Award (1996)

The Architect of the Year Award, India (1996)

Asian Innovations Award, Bronze Award – Architecture, Far Eastern Economic Review
(1998)

The Chairman's Award of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in recognition of a
lifetime's achievement in and contribution to the field of architecture (2001)

Awarded Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa), University of Ruhunu ( 14 th September

2002 )

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“Every society possesses what is called an ‘image of the
world’. This image has its roots in the unconscious
structure of society and requires a specific conception of
time to foster it. The works and words of men are made of
time, they are time, they are a movement towards this or
that, whatever the reality the this or that designates, even if
it is nothingness itself. Time is the depositary of meaning.”

A building can only be understood by moving around and through it and

by experiencing the modulation and feel the spaces one moves through it
and by experiencing the modulation and feel of the spaces one moves
through it end by experiencing the modulation and feel of the spaces one
moves through- from the outside into verandah, than rooms, passages,
courtyards.
Architecture cannot be totally explained but must be experienced.

Geoffrey Bawa

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Geoffrey Bawa by Taylor, B. B.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Bawa

http://www.geoffreybawa.com/

http://archnet.org/library/parties/one-party.jsp?party_id=73

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