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by Senake Bandaranayake

(Extracts from a speech at a ceremony commemorating Geoffrey Bawa's 84th birth anniversary)

Geoffrey Bawa  - a new architectural vocabularypic.by Dominique Sansoni

The deaths, within a few days of each other, of Geoffrey Bawa and Ian Goonetileke in May, were both important markers in the passing of cultural time, in the evolution of Sri Lanka's intellectual landscape.

Born on either side of 1920 (Bawa in 1919, Goonetileke in January 1922), beginning their apprenticeship in the 1940s, and producing their first mature work in the 60s, they belonged to that remarkable generation of immediate postwar and post-Independence artists, writers, scientists, analysts and intellectuals - working in English, Sinhala, Tamil and the languages of art, science and technology - whose creativity was marked by the optimism of reconstruction and the excitement of discovery and rediscovery.

Starting out from the austerities and constraints of a world at war, and the inherited shambles of incomplete modern transition over 400 years of colonial hegemony, they set out to create something new; but also to draw on, to synthesise, the lessons of history; to discover - consciously or unconsciously - the constructs appropriate to their time and place, with a complexity and comprehensiveness of vision, and a perfection of craft.

Using the materials and resources that were at hand, they nevertheless pursued the highest standards of excellence and international calibration. The high quality of their achievement is therefore also marked by its distinctiveness, its Sri Lankan focus, form, content.

Despite Brian Brace Taylor's and David Robson's books on Bawa, and other studies such as the less easily accessible Anjalendran-Wanasundera overview of 20th century building, the history of contemporary Sri Lankan architecture still remains to be properly documented and studied. Venturing into a field that is somewhat outside the scope of my own work, I would like to highlight a few aspects of Bawa's contribution to the culture of his time.

Geoffrey Bawa's main achievement lies in his creation of a new but specifically Sri Lankan architectural vocabulary, which he deployed in a large body of work. It stands as an icon of our time, echoed also in its extensions and variations in the work of an entire generation of younger architects belonging to what we might call 'the Bawa School'.

This tradition was at least partly inspired by the spirit and language of the International Style, pioneered by Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Dutch and German schools, de Stijl and the Bauhaus, in the 1920s and 30s, but Bawa was in no way replicatory or imitative. Whatever subterranean effect international developments and international experience may have had on his work, it was wholly absorbed and interpreted in Sri Lankan contexts, usages and forms, using conventional materials and technology. In other words, he did for contemporary architecture what the '43 Group did for painting, Martin Wickremasinghe for the Sinhala novel Sarachchandra for theatre, Lester James Peries for film.

The International Style in architecture was marked by several distinguishing features, amongst the most important of which were a complete break with 'historical form' and the creation of a new aesthetic based on an intimate relationship between material - especially new industrial materials - form, and function. As part of the modern movement, its architectonics, internal and external finishes, ornamentation, even its furniture and fittings, absorbed and contributed to contemporary avant-garde art and design. Above all, it deployed space in an entirely new way.

Bawa drew at least two lessons from this: one he broke with mainstream European-influenced design, such as Neo-Classicism and its opposite, Orientalism, both of which had dominated Sri Lankan public and elite architecture for a century before the 1960s; two he evolved a new language of form and space based on his modernist reading of the Sri Lankan architectural tradition, which was still alive around him.

We see therefore that although Bawa's work is imbued with the spirit of the International Style, his architecture is in some ways the opposite of internationalist modernism. More important to him, even his principal source, was the 'perennial' Sri Lankan architectural landscape. It was the lessons and experience of this that he transformed and applied to new contexts and new uses.

Taylor and Robson have described Bawa's work at length, but we may point to some specific details. Bawa emphasised the utilisation of well-known existing materials and architectural elements. He popularised the return of the traditional, half-round, terracotta roof tile in elite and middle-class housing, as well as the un-glazed terracotta floor tile, whose use had almost disappeared by the mid-20th century. He attached special importance to the use of varati, a shell-fossil based lime wash, which imparted a soft but glaring white finish to walls. He reiterated the importance of the pitched roof and the open courtyard.

He incorporated a great deal from the architecture of the 'manorial' buildings, the valavvas of the 18th and early 19th centuries, which were themselves derived from the architecture of the village, and also from the less well recognised street architecture of traditional urban centres.

He often quoted this manorial architecture in his contemporary design, and used some of its characteristic motifs, such as turned wooden columns, large glazed jars, moulding-decorated door-frames, panelled and painted door and window shutters, the 17th-18th century fanlight, and occasionally the mal-lali or elaborately carved ventilators that were placed above doors and windows, and the characteristic shallow drain, the sapattu kanuva.

He also had a significant influence on the increasing interest in the use of antique furniture, by showing how appropriately it fitted in into a modern aesthetic. The traditional domestic dwelling was a combination of enclosed, dark but often well-ventilated internal spaces, and open airy verandahs and internal courtyards.

The house, unless it was a street house, usually stood in its own garden - often an un-shaded inner garden, with many potted plants and flowering shrubs, and a tree-covered outer garden. Bawa re-interpreted this and created his own distinctive use of space, opening the house out into the garden and bringing the garden into the house, but also leaving well covered and private internal areas.

One of the special aspects of the Sri Lankan architectural traditional that has not been much examined is its inspired use of location and terrain. This is amply demonstrated at sites of the classic period, such as Mihintale, Vessagiriya, Situlpahuva, Varana, Sigiriya and numerous other locations, but it is best seen in the carefully selected and subtly utilised site locations of the 19th century temples in the Southern and Western Provinces.

Some of Bawa's most significant projects, such as the Vallemadama campus of the Ruhuna University and the Integral Education Centre at Piliyandala, display the same inspired use of topography and landscape.

The spatial relationships in Bawa's buildings, worked out with a complex but 'perfect' geometry, were his very special signature. At the heart of his creativity was an unerring aesthetic sensibility, whose precise building blocks have not yet been fully investigated in the sense that they may prove to be capable of mathematical and modular analysis. Perhaps it is the totality and complexity of this aesthetic sensibility, which educated several generations of Sri Lankan design and designers, that is his most enduring contribution.

It should be part of our tribute to Geoffrey Bawa that we address some of the issues that have been raised regarding his work. Stringent analysts may critique certain aspects of Bawa's architecture: its restriction to elite private homes, hotels and public buildings; its failure to address the huge demand for urban and suburban mass housing; its use of a 'pre-industrial' architectural vocabulary; its exploitatory use of landscape; its endorsement of the cannibalisation of period buildings for their wooden elements; the high cost of maintenance; the repetition of formula, especially in some of the later projects. But to say all that is to the miss the point: his work, like that of a great artist or theoretical physicist, is fundamental contribution to the formation of contemporary culture.

It places the responsibility on succeeding generations to recognise and learn from its historic role and to turn, as he did in his time, the next chapter.

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