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At Kandalama - An environmentally friendly architecture

by Channa Daswatta

To claim that the controversial hotel project in Kandalama is an environmentally friendly architecture could sound a cliche.

The pros and cons of the project at the level of environmental policy has been argued about in other flora and in the media. The implications of the presence of the hotel in the location overlooking the ancient Kandalama reservoir is contestable and will be the future. Whatever the social and political implications of that presence, its architecture and the intentions behind it are arguably environmentally friendly.

Usually an environmentally friendly architecture is one that builds in the environment with what is accepted as a sustainable scale and of sustainable material.

Small is considered good and the use of naturally occurring materials with an allusion to the vernacular tradition of a particular geographical location, even better.

Yet, Geoffrey Bawa whose buildings are usually recognisable by some of these virtues (1) has built at Kandalama a flat roofed building several stories high. In what is possibly the most 'natural' of the sites he has built on, in an area steeped in the history of the land, Bawa abandons the way of building he has been recognised for adopts a totally new language. This more than anything else is the greatest concession to making the architecture environmentally friendly.

Given the complicated needs of a 162 roomed luxury hotel, the building has been concentrated on the least possible ground area without compromising its essential function as a belvedere for observing the beauty of natural landscape around it.

The site itself, at the base of a rocky eminence in the jungle is full of dramatic rock formations and ancient trees. The place is a haunt of monkeys and many birds of prey who use the thermal currants above the rocks to fly.

The overriding influence therefore was to restrict the hotel to an existing clearing from a previous use as a chena by surrounding villagers.

Even here, most of the building stands on giant pilot, so as not to disturb the natural flow of rainwater and the growth of vegetation. The flat roofs with natural endemic vegetation goes a long way in not chairing the thermal balance of the area too much.

Only at the entrance and the public rooms does the building cut dramatically into the rocky saddle that is a high area between two flat areas on which the room blocks are built. Here in the public rooms the hotel is at its most organic.

The existing rock formations dictating the shape of the cave-like entrance and the rock waled tunnel that leads from the reception to the main public lounges. The elemental forms and constructs of the site becoming the walls and floors of some of the rooms.

Outside, geometric lines of pools and terraces cut across the natural lines of the rocky outcrop.

Once inside, the building virtually disappears, becoming a series of vertical and horizontal silhouettes that support the horizontal planes of floor and roof, the essential elements of shelter. Highly polished stone floors, reflect the sky and water outside creating an illusion of these vertical supports coming out of the every landscape.

There is no decoration, nothing to distract from the natural surroundings. The building is stripped down to an architecture that is present only to create a series of visual sequences that move the visitor around the hotel, every time unveiling a different aspect of the dramatic landscape. The straight line geometry of the structure bringing it into sharper focus.

The felicitous incidents that are so much a part of Bawa's architecture, here engages directly with the immediate environment of the site.

Huge rocks stand in lobbys suggesting the potency of the environment, the undercroft of the dining room becomes a rock garden where a dramatic rock formation is seemingly held back on a delicately folded concrete retaining wall. One of the staircases starts on top with a spectacular windswept view of the lake and descends to twist and turn around a boulder that appears in the stair hall on the lower levels.

The link between the two wings of rooms becomes a delicate arboreal walkway with the structure reduced to a series of vertical supports for floor and flat roof. Like all of Bawa's buildings this too is firmly rooted in the idea of place (2). Here the focus however is not on any vernacular or other tradition, but on an architecture that recedes in the view.

Any building is essentially an intrusion on the environment.

That is its very essence - to change an environment to suit a human purpose. Usually they not only simply change the environment, but the architecture brings attention to the buildings as objects that represent the socio-political reasons for those changes.

At kandalama one of the reasons for the existence of the building on that location is the environment. Bawa overcomes this paradox by creating an architecture that rises seemlessly from the environment, holds its own and stands back to let the environment in.

At every place in the building the environment asserts itself by its presence either visually or in material form affecting the structure and form of the building the structure and form of the building and how people move through it. This is its greatest virtue as an environmentally friendly architecture.

Approach to housing - planning aspects

by Jayantha Domingo

The main religious and cultural practices in Sri Lanka always promoted the essence of simple ways of life. The simplicity and clarity prevailed in the whole range of activities starting from food and clothing, habits, religious and cultural practices and further to the planning and design of built environment.

This simplicity essentially has advocated limitations on the use of material resources in the day-to-day activities of the people. This in turn influenced the folk building tradition which is essentially the home building process of the people.

Since the settlements of the people in the past were basically in the dry zone they had to be located in close proximity to a source of water for the purpose of direct human consumption, the cultivation and the raising of animals.

The source of water in this case was the rain fed tank (weva). Weva itself was a source of food in addition to being a source of water for irrigation. The houses were located in a cluster form which gave them social cohesiveness and sense of security and protection from the wild animals in the surrounding jungle.

Thus a minimum area of forest cover was cleared to allow for the human settlement and the production of food. Disturbance to the ecology was bare minimum. The people were very conscious about the importance of the continuous existence of the flora and fauna in the jungle and the water sources, on which they were depending partly for the supply of food and also for building materials for the erection of their houses.

The ownership of land was transformed from parents to children and sub division forming strict legal and physical demarcations were not carried out. Hence in the traditional villages the land fragmentation did not take place. Thus group ownership of land prevailed in contrast to the individual ownership in the West.

With the colonisation by West the crop pattern in the country also changed into a commercially oriented one based on wet zones. With the introduction of coffee, tea and rubber in large scale and the development of infrastructure facilities to reach these cultivations, the settlements started to get established in the wet zone.

The Sri Lankans who were quite at home in establishing their settlements in the dry zones were completely ill-equipped to face the new conditions that prevailed in the wet zone. Hence they had to merely follow the British settlement strategies and land sub-division systems.

Although there may be other causes this was the main factor which encouraged the strict land sub-divisions with no proper concern or understanding of the particular topographical or climatic conditions. With the increase in population and the reaching of new infrastructure and basic service facilities to certain selected areas of the country, uncontrolled land sub-divisions started to take place in all the sub-urban areas initially and started spreading into rural areas subsequently.

With this background, if we look into the major events related to housing development which took place during the last decade or so, we can briefly discuss the major positive and negative impacts on the eco-systems which were results of same.

State sponsored housing development activities

The major housing programmes which were initiated and implemented by the state basically fall under three categories.

i. Programmes with direct intervention by state in planning and construction.

ii. Programmes implemented by the state with user participation.

iii. Housing loan programmes with minimum intervention in planning and construction by state.

Under the first two categories the government had the opportunity to do the overall planning both at the programme level and the project level and hence there was a good scope for the state to look seriously into the aspect of eco-sensitive housing development.

This was possible right from the selection of sites, formulation of development strategies to the layout, planning, design of housing units and selection of materials and technology.

(To be continued)

Auditorium for OSC under construction

A design competition was conducted by the Overseas School of Colombo (OSC), Battaramulla together with the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects for the design of a Hitech Auditorium for the Overseas School of Colombo.

The panel of judges consisted four senior architects representing S.L.I.A., Head of School and Trustees of the Overseas School of Colombo. The Designs submitted by Kahawita de Silva & Associates (Pvt) Ltd. was awarded the First Prize and commissioned to proceed with the construction.

The picture shows a front view of the building, which is now under construction, and completion is envisaged by July next year.

The Project consists of a multi functional Auditorium with a seating capacity of 400, a Teaching Studio, Recreational Hall, Basement for approx 30 car parks and all other ancillary facilities that affiliated for a project of this nature.

Whither skyscraper?

Super Towers are considered the built expression of financial activity. In retrospect, Chicago, Manhattan or Hong Kong has had little choice than to extend their levels of habitation skyward.

A concentration of high level economic activity in a single place naturally results in towers shooting up. However, even where they do not present the most obviously economical way of achieving the necessary floor areas, they still appear as symbolic expressions of financial success.

What feeds these towers? They consist of mixed uses, but the finance/business component is vital to the towers. While the other uses fluctuate significantly, the amount of office space is invariably the significant part.

The towers have to spring from a bed of economic and political conditions that are just right to support the process of getting it approved and built. Thus the cycle is on a down turn. Some recent examples are Jean Nouvel's "Tour Sans Fins" at La Defense, Paris and Foster and Partner's Millennium Tower in Japan, an ambitious tower rising from the sea, with its own harbour.

The same fate befell the Grollo Tower in Melbourne by Denton Corker Marshall (DCM) which aspires to be the world's tallest at 560m. But still, with Petronas and the recently opened Jin Mao representing Asia among the three tallest (that's 3 with Sears Tower in Chicago coming second to Petronas), there are more on the ambitious path, Kohn Pederson's Fox's 460m World Financial Centre in Shanghai with its giant hole an viewing gallery on top, and the proposed Tapei Financial Centre, by C. Y. Lee intending to reach 508m, still more Asians on the way up.

The ten tallest so far:

1. Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, 452m by Cesar Pelli & Associates.

2. Sears Tower, Chicago, 442m, SOM.

3. Jin Mao Building, Shanghai, 421m, SOM.

4. World Trade Centre (I & II) New York 417m & 415m, Minoru Yamasaki Associates.

5. Empire State Building, New York, 381m, Shreve, Lamb & Hammon.

6. Central Plaza, Hong Kong, 374m, NG Chun Man & Associates.

7. Bank of China, Hong Kong, 369m, I.M. Pei & Partners.

8. T & C Tower Kaoshiung, 348m, C.Y. Lee/HOK

9. Amoco Building, Chicago, 346m, Edward D. Stone

10. The Centre, Hong Kong, 346m, Dennis Lau & NG Chun Man.

The main reasons for the tower as of today appear to be:

* Building as much floor area on a site as possible to maximize the return per square meter.

* Businesses need to be close to each other, which has created a demand for multi-storey buildings (where demand goes higher, so do the buildings).

* Image and prestige.

In 1956 when Frank Lloyd Wright proposed "Mile High Illinois", a tower 1609 meters in height, with 500 floors meant to support a population of a 100,000, he must have had an inkling as to the above factors. It was most certainly unfeasible at the time, as he very well knew, judging by the helicopter pads and the nuclear powered lifts. He saw the main obstacle only as finance, as can be seen from his claim "No one can afford to build it now, but in the future no one can afford not to build it."

The ten tallest of the future (if they ever get built):

1. X-Seed 4000, Tokyo, 4000m, Taisai Corporation

2. Try 2004, Tokyo, 2004m, Shizmu Corporation

3. Aeropolis 2001, Tokyo, 2001m, Hazama Corporation

4. Mile High Illinois, Chicago, 1609m, Frank Lloyd Wright

5. Pyramid-in-Pyramid, Singapore, 1500m, Kobayashi Corporation

6. Mother, Tokyo, 1321m, Taisai Corporation.

7. Bionic Tower, Hong Kong, 1128m, Javier Pioz, Maria Rosa Cevera, Eloy Celaya

8. Super Pyramid, Japan, 1000m, architect undisclosed

9. Sky City, Tokyo, 1000m, Takenaka Corporation

10. Petronas Towers (for scale).

NANDIKE SAMARANAYAKE

Part II - Year II CSA, 99/00

What the future may hold for the Super Towers - Based on Sector Analysis on Tall Buildings published in World Architecture September 1999.

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