Geoffrey Bawa was a Sri Lankan architect known as the father of tropical modernism. He studied in England but returned to Sri Lanka in 1949 where he transformed his rubber plantation home Lunuganga into a series of outdoor rooms and gardens connected by pathways. This inspired him to become an architect. Some of his most notable works included Lunuganga with its Italian-inspired gardens, the sprawling Ruhunu University campus composed of simple pavilions connected by covered walkways, and his adaptive reuse of row houses in Colombo into his residence featuring courtyards and gardens. Bawa's designs were influenced by local styles but brought in modernist ideas. He is renowned for his sensitivity to site and

1. Geoffrey Bawa
TROPICAL MODERNISM
B.V.ABHIRAM SEC-B SEM-6

2. 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. 2

3. 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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4. • 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.
PRACTICE
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5. 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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6. •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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7. GEOFFREY BAWA
THE LUNUGANGA, BENTOTA, SRILANKA
RUHUNU UNIVERSITY, MANTARA, SRI LANKA
33RD LANE HOUSE, COLOMBO, SRI LANKA
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8. 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
LUNUGANGA, BENTOTA
The creation of one man’s vision which, over 40
years, was nurtured into a reality. 8

9. •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.`
The Italian inspired garden with spectacular views over lakes and tropical
jungle together with a simply designed plantation house
Then ..
Now ..
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10. 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.
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11. SITE PLAN
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12. 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.
•Set at the edge of a cinnamon plantation
•high on the hill overlooking the lake to the south thus giving the privacy.
STUDIO
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13. 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.
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14. 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
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15. Exterior view showing a figural
sculpture monumentally situated
The entry steps up to the south terrace
View from the sitting room across the
north terrace
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16. Exterior detail showing
lattice windows
Interior view showing rustic
seating area with views to
garden
Exterior view of entrance to
foyer
Exterior view through
oversized door-frames
reinforced and supported by
central columns 16

17. Interior view showing linear forms of
window casings and furniture
Interior of the Pavilion on the Eastern
Terrace
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18. Exterior detail of staircase Exterior detail of
stepped walkway
Exterior detail of carved wood
pillar
Exterior detail of stairs cut
through landscape
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19. 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”
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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20. 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
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21. SITE PLAN
•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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22. 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.
DESIGN OF THE UNIVERSITY
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23. •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.
MASSING
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 23

24. •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
MASSING
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25. •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 air-
conditioned and the buildings
rely for the most part on natural
ventilation.
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26. 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 26

27. 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
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28. •The house in 33rd Lane is an essay in architect
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.
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29. •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.
GROUND
FLOOR PLAN
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30. FIRST FLOOR PLAN SECOND FLOOR PLAN
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31. SECTION
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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32. Door to stairwayDoor by Ismeth Ismeth
Raheem
Pool court with horse's head
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33. Sitting room and courtyardCarport and main corridor
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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34. 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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35. 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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36. “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
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37. 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
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