Professionals

SLIA grooms professional architects
 

Hiran H. SENEWIRATNE

ARCHITECTS: The Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (SLIA) is the only organisation that produces professional architects to the country, SLIA President Rukshan Widyalankara said. He said that students with three GCE (A/L) passes could apply for their architecture programme.

The Institute mainly promotes and advances the study, practice and application of and research in architecture and its allied subjects and art and sciences connected therewith.

The current membership of SLIA is 518 comprising of 66 Fellows, 402 Associates, 13 registered and 37 Student members. SLIA members are internationally recognised and they are employed not only in Sri Lanka but overseas as well, he said.

Widyalankara said that they organise, supervise and control the admission and professional education and training of persons desiring to qualify as architects.

They also prescribe or approve courses of study for the qualifying examinations for membership of the institute and to conduct or provide for the conduct of such courses and examinations.

The council of the SLIA comprises of President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and seven members and the office - bearers are elected by the general membership for a period of two years.

The Institute has established two Boards to look after professional activities namely Architects Registration Board and Professional Affairs Board (PAB).

The PAB monitors professional conduct, practice etc of members. The PAB also prepares professional documents related to the practice of architecture and conducts continuous professional development programmes, advices clients.

The public and any institution can seeks advice on professional and practice matters. The PAB has also developed new client-architecture agreement for work below Rs 50 million and a separate comprehensive Agreement with conditions engagement for projects over Rs 5 million.

The latest addition to the SLIA professional documents is the publication on pre-qualification and selection of architect consortium consultancy services, Widyalankara said.

The SLIA has an excellent library, which includes books, references, collections and lending collections, periodicals both current and bound. Trade literature collection, conference, seminars and report collection, collection of case studies, essays, technical reports, are also done by the SLIA.

SLIA then the Ceylon Institute of Architects (CIA) was formed by this small group of overseas qualified architects, who were members of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), at its inaugural meeting held on September 11, 1957 at the Tea Propaganda Board, Price Building, Prince Street, Fort, Colombo.

The founder members, all of whom were senior members of the architectural profession in Ceylon, later became the first fellows of the Ceylon Institute of Architects, having adopted a Constitution which enabled them to follow practices similar to the British Institute, the intention of the CIA was to obtain the status of an allied Society of the RIBA.

This they achieved in I960, by which time the membership of The Ceylon Institute of Architects had risen to 30 members.

Due to the hard work of founder members, the Institute managed to establish a School of Architecture in 1961.

In 1976, through a private member's motion by the then Minister of Housing and Construction, Pieter Keuneman, the Ceylon Institute of Architects was incorporated as the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (SLIA) by an Act of Parliament, called Sri Lanka Institute of Architects.

SLIA is the national body of architects incorporated by an Act of Parliament. called Sri Lanka Institute of Architects. Law No. 1 of 1976. The power to form an Architects Registration Board (ARB) was vested by Law No. 14 of 1996, which is an amendment, made to it.

The first Institute of Architects in Sri Lanka was formed by a small group of architects as the Ceylon Institute of Architects (CIA) in 1957.