Students of SAARCH countries gather

Under an initiative led by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation of Architects (SAARCH) current Chairman Architect Jayantha Perera, the student bodies of the organizational countries gathered in Sri Lanka for the first time in history.

The meeting was represented by students of architecture from the following countries; Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and Nepal. "Unlike other SAARC related professional bodies, SAARCH does not comprise of all the SAARC countries. This organization is a gathering of the national institutes of architects of each country and only the above mentioned countries comprised of national architectural organizations until recently," said the current SAARCH Chairman, Architect Perera.

Architect Gurunath Dalvi of India handing over the SAARCH Chairmanship to Architect Jayantha Perera at the SAARCH conference held in Colombo.

Indicating the successfulness of the student body meeting held in Sri Lanka, he said that Sri Lanka has been invited to participate in the annual conference of the National Architect Students' Association (NASA) in India which is due to be held in Chennai. It is commencing on December 27 and will continue until December 30.

The annual meeting of the NASA, which was held during previous years only at national level, has been escalated to a regional level this year. Architect Jayantha Perera will be the SAARCH Chairman and the initiator of the cause. Also, apart from Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan will also be participating in the conference. "This is a positive sign which indicates that the student-level organization of SAARCH can now be stably established. I believe that this conference would serve as a platform to officially set up the SAARCH student organization shortly," Perera said.

He said that the establishment of a regional student body would assist in knowledge sharing amongst the countries as well as for the younger generation to be aware of the architectural trends and needs of the region.

SAARCH which was initially established October 14th, 1991 held its first meeting in Colombo and Architect Mihindu Keerthiratne was appointed its founder Chairman.

It was ascertained with the objective of assisting the development of national architectural institute bodies within the South Asian Region so that it would help provide opportunities for consultation on matters such as holding of conferences for architects in order to discuss professional topics as well as exchange ideas. The organization was granted "SAARC recognized body status" in May 1997.

To date SAARCH has held nine meetings out of which three were held in Sri Lanka, inclusive of the very latest which was held in February this year.

During the meeting, the Chairmanship was transferred from previous Chairman Architect Gurunath Dalvi of India, to Architect Jayantha Perera. Although, until recently, only Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal had officially established national bodies for architects, now Bhutan has also joined the league.

The various activities conducted by SAARCH include sharing of information among the regional architects as well as organizing various competitions for the regional architects.