Geoffrey Bawa

Geoffrey Bawa (1919-2003) is regarded as one of the most influential architects of twentieth-century Asia. Born in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, he first worked as a lawyer before qualifying as an architect at the Architectural Association in London in 1957. Over a career spanning five decades, he completed more than two hundred projects: private houses, schools, hotels, factories and his country’s parliament. In them he brought together modernism and Sri Lanka’s architectural history, along with local materials and craft techniques. His buildings unfold as spatial narratives that follow the terrain and draw rocks, trees and landscape into the architecture. As Bawa himself put it, architecture ‘cannot be totally explained but must be experienced’.

The retrospective Geoffrey Bawa: Architecture for the Senses brings together more than 250 exhibits, including drawings, models, furniture, historic footage and photographs taken by Bawa himself. It features key works such as his garden estate Lunuganga, the Bentota Beach Hotel and the Kandalama Hotel, and new photographs by Iwan Baan show how his buildings are lived in and used today.