– Kathleen James-Chakraborty

Geoffrey Bawa, the Sri Lankan architect who died in 2003 at 83 years old in his native Columbo, has been justly celebrated for the skill with which he integrated modern architectural forms and materials into the landscapes and built environment of Sri Lanka and Bali. Although he was often labelled a critical regionalist, his was not an oppositional practice; his works after all included Sri Lanka’s parliament. It has nonetheless been easy to romanticise Bawa for his overhanging rooves and sheltered courtyards, the lush landscapes in which they are set, and the local artisanship that decorate their otherwise spare forms; they have a whiff of the carefully curated tropical paradise, that western visitors to his Bentota Beach Hotel were meant to enjoy.

Geoffrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives, ably edited by Shayari de Silva for the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, manages to skillfully avoid such easy generalisations. It is a handsomely produced volume that pairs a series of texts with photo essays, focusing on just eight projects it offers targeted insights into Bawa’s architecture and its multiple contexts without pretending to be comprehensive. It is particularly generous in recognising the contribution of his office staff in developing the practice’s designs, including naming the individual makers of the drawings it illustrates. One of the authors and a partner in the firm, Channa Daswatte’s exposition of how the office functioned is particularly welcome. Not surprisingly, Minette de Silva also makes an appearance, serving as a foil for Bawa’s deeper engagement in Tariq Jazeel’s essay on how they related to the particulars of Sri Lanka’s vernacular architecture and the politics of postcolonial nationhood. In another fine essay, this one on Bawa’s design for the Batujimbar Estate in Bali, Shirley Surya strikes a shrewd balance between acknowledging its relationship to global tourism for the elite and the subtlety and subsequent influence of the place-specific approach Bawa pioneered.

The drawings themselves range from Bawa’s own preliminary sketches, many on the gridded paper he favoured to help structure his design thinking, to those embedded in his handwritten letters (often on the same gridded paper), to more formal presentation drawings credited to his associates. There is real variety in the approaches taken to graphic presentation, especially with some drawings focusing on the buildings alone and others paying meticulous attention to how they were sited and planted. Their continuity is established through the relatively understated focus, with shadows kept to a minimum and no use of colour, as well as the character of the architecture itself. Bawa trusted those with whom he worked to share a commitment to graphic as well as architectural excellence.

Kathleen James-Chakraborty is a Professor of Art and Architectural History at University College Dublin.

Shayari de Silva, ed., Geoffrey Bawa: Drawing from the Archives (2023) is published by Lars Müller Publishers. Copies of the book can be purchased here.