ARCHITECT SEMINAR ON GEOFFREY BAWA

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ARCHITECT SEMINAR ON GEOFFREY BAWA
GAURAV SINGH ODHYAN B ARCH III 071009
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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

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• 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.

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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 Bawas 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. 

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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.

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• 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

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Santiago Calatrava
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GEOFFREY BAWA
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CASE STUDIES

1. THE LUNUGANGA, BENTOTA, SRILANKA
2. RUHUNU UNIVERSITY, MANTARA, SRI LANKA
3. 33RD LANE HOUSE, COLOMBO, SRI LANKA

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LUNUGANGA, BENTOTA
A HOUSE IS A GARDEN
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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
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WHAT IS LUNUGANGA
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AT THE BEGINNING
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• 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.

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NOW
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The Italian inspired garden with spectacular
views over lakes and tropical jungle together
with a simply designed plantation house
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"A place of continued varied sensations
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The creation of one mans vision which, over 40
years, was nurtured into a reality. 
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Its a legacy of a great architect.
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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 .
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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.
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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.
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SITE PLAN
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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.

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SITE PLAN SHOWING LANDSCAPPING
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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.
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Aerial view showing lawns to river
Exterior view of garden and façade
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Exterior view showing stepped walkway through
garden
Exterior view showing dramatic plantings
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Aerial view showing retaining wall's scalloped
layout design
Exterior view from the bottom of the hill to
plantings
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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
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Interior view showing rustic seating area with
views to garden
Exterior detail showing lattice windows
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Interior of the Pavilion on the Eastern Terrace
Interior view showing linear forms of window
casings and furniture
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Exterior detail of staircase
Exterior detail of stepped walkway
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Exterior detail of carved wood pillar
Exterior detail of stairs cut through landscape
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Exterior view of entrance to foyer
Exterior view through oversized door-frames
reinforced and supported by central columns
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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
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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.
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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.
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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'.
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RUHUNU UNIVERSITY, MANTARA
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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
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• 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.

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SITE PLAN
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DESIGN OF THE UNIVERSITY
Bawas 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.
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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
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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
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• 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
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• 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
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• 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.

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Buildings are aligned carefully to minimize solar
intrusion and mitigate the effects of the
south-west monsoon. Few of the spaces are
air-conditioned and the buildings rely for the
most part on natural ventilation.
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Exterior view showing large dimensions and triple
story covered entrance portico
Exterior detail showing passage to planted
courtyard
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Exterior view showing building's wrapping
terraces and position on a hill
Exterior view of façade showing stilt support
frame
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Exterior view showing drive way to entrance
Exterior view to covered walkways
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Exterior view showing weathered façade
Exterior view showing wooden piers supporting
beam construction pitched roof
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33RD LANE HOUSE, COLOMBO, SRI LANKA
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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
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WHAT IS SO SPECIAL IN 33RD LANE HOUSE..
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• 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.
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• 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.

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• 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.

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FIRST FLOOR PLAN
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
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SECTION
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Door to stairway
Door by Ismeth Ismeth Raheem
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Carport and main corridor
Sitting room and courtyard
Pool court with horse's head
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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
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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.
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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)
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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 )
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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.
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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
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Geoffrey Bawa by Taylor, B. B. http//en.wikipedi
a.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Bawa http//www.geoffreybawa.
com/ http//archnet.org/library/parties/one-party
.jsp?party_id73
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THANK YOU!!!