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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.
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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 UlrikPlesner 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’. • ChannaDaswatte 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
CASE STUDIES • THE LUNUGANGA, BENTOTA, SRILANKA • RUHUNU UNIVERSITY, MANTARA, SRI LANKA • 33RD LANE HOUSE, COLOMBO, SRI LANKA
LUNUGANGA, BENTOTA A HOUSE IS A GARDEN
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
The creation of one man’s vision which, over 40 years, was nurtured into a reality.
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.
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.
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
Interior view showing rustic seating area with views to garden Exterior detail showing lattice windows
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 door-frames 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'.
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.
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 air-conditioned and the buildings rely for the most part on natural ventilation.
