ARCHITECT SEMINAR ON
GEOFFREY BAWA
GAURAV SINGH ODHYAN
B ARCH III
071009
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.
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.
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.
•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
Santiago Calatrava
GEOFFREY BAWA
CASE STUDIES
I.
THE LUNUGANGA, BENTOTA, SRILANKA
II.
RUHUNU UNIVERSITY, MANTARA, SRI LANKA
III. 33RD LANE HOUSE, COLOMBO, SRI LANKA
LUNUGANGA, BENTOTA
A HOUSE IS A GARDEN
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
WHAT IS LUNUGANGA……
AT THE BEGINNING……
•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
"A place of continued varied sensations“
The creation of one man’s vision which, over 40 years,
was nurtured into a reality.
It’s a legacy of a great architect.
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 .
A garden is not a static object, it is
a moving spectacle, a series of
scenographic 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.
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, pavilions,
broad walks to a multitude of
courtyards and pools.
SITE PLAN
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.
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.
Aerial view showing lawns to river
Exterior view of garden and façade
Exterior view showing stepped
walkway through garden
Exterior view showing dramatic
plantings
Aerial view showing retaining wall's
scalloped layout design
Exterior view from the bottom of the
hill to plantings
The entry steps up to the south terrace
Exterior view showing a figural
sculpture monumentally situated
View from the sitting room across the
north terrace
Exterior detail showing lattice windows
Interior view showing rustic seating
area with views to garden
Interior of the Pavilion on the
Eastern Terrace
Interior view showing linear forms of
window casings and furniture
Exterior detail of staircase
Exterior detail of stepped walkway
Exterior detail of carved wood pillar
Exterior detail of stairs cut through
landscape
Exterior view of entrance to foyer
Exterior view through oversized doorframes reinforced and supported by
central columns
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”
Today the garden seems so natural, so established, that it is hard
to appreciate just how much effort has gone into its creation.
Vast quantities of earth have been shifted, trees and shrubs have
been planted and transplanted, branches have been weighed
down with stones to train their shape.
In 1948, a young man dreamt of making a garden. Today
the garden is in its prime but, after the passage of over fifty
monsoons, the young man has grown old. As he sits in his
wheelchair on the terrace and watches the sun setting
across the lake it may be that he reflects on his
achievement.
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'.
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
•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.
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.
MASSING
•Bawa placed the vice
chancellor's lodge and a guest
house on the western hill and
flooded the intervening valley to
create a buffer between the road
and the main campus.
•wrapped the buildings of the
science faculty around the
northern hill and those of the arts
faculty around the southern hill,
using the depression between
them for the library and other
central facilities.
Central valley with library
Buildings were planned
orthogonally on a north-south
grid but were allowed to 'run
with site'.
Natural features such as rocky
outcrops were incorporated
into the bases of buildings or
became focal features of the
open spaces.
The limited architectural
vocabulary clearly derives
from Porto- Sinhalese traditions
Exterior view showing terraces and
juxtaposition of buildings with each other
and landscape
•Pavilions, varying in scale and
extent, are connected by
covered links and separated by
an ever-changing succession of
garden courts.
•Everywhere there are places to
pause and consider, to sit and
contemplate, to gather and
discuss.
•The main routes either cut
uncompromisingly across the
contours or meander horizontally
along them.
Exterior view from street level
showing use of stone and concrete
in façade
•Views are carefully
orchestrated in a
scenographic sequence that
conceals and reveals in turn,
playing the northern views of
jungle and distant hills against
the southern views of the lake
and the ocean beyond,
always referring back to the
picturesque hump-backed
bridge that connects the
entrance across the lake to
the central valley and acts as
the linchpin of the whole
composition.
Exterior view to sprawling elevation
•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, comprising
walls of plastered brick on a
concrete frame and roofs of
half-round tile laid on
corrugated cement sheeting.
Buildings are aligned carefully
to minimize solar intrusion and
mitigate the effects of the
south-west monsoon.
Few of the spaces are airconditioned and the buildings
rely for the most part on
natural ventilation.
Exterior view showing large
dimensions and triple story
covered entrance portico
Exterior detail showing
passage to planted
courtyard
Exterior view showing building's
wrapping terraces and position
on a hill
Exterior view of façade showing stilt
support frame
Exterior view showing drive way
to entrance
Exterior view to covered walkways
Exterior view showing weathered
façade
Exterior view showing wooden piers
supporting beam construction pitched roof
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
Keywords
Adaptive re-use;
courtyard house
WHAT IS SO SPECIAL IN 33RD LANE HOUSE…..
•The house in 33rd Lane is an essay in
architectural bricolage.
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.
•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.
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
SECTION
Door by Ismeth Ismeth Raheem
Door to stairway
Carport and main corridor
Sitting room and courtyard
Pool court with horse's head
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
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.
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)
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 )
“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
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
THANK YOU!!!