By design

In 2011, two friends and I boarded a south-bound train. We were visiting Lunuganga at a time before the time of supervised garden tours, which meant we were left, more or less, to our own devices. One of our group was studying architecture, and gave us an impromptu tour. I recalled her pausing by the sundial sculpture to tell us about its creator, Laki Senanayake. But my most vivid memory was when we had finished exploring all the hidden nooks and crannies of the estate, and decided that it was time to have what we called a ‘Sound of Music’ moment. Together, the three of us ran down an open corridor and burst out onto the gently sloping hill leading down to the Dedduwa lake, whooping loudly (as I said, there was no one around to dissuade us). In the corridor, we ran past another of Laki Senanayake’s murals - I recall the blur of colour on my left and the view of the garden before us, and the brief moment of feeling enclosed before being surrounded by green, open space. 

That memory was the first thing that came to mind when I read that Laki Senanayake had passed away. During an online memorial, people shared personal memories, shed tears and played clips of footage of him sitting in his home and retreat, Diyabubula in Dambulla, whistling to birds and recounting how his fear of them became fascination. 

This newsletter isn’t going to be a eulogy/obituary of Laki Senanayake, not least because plenty of his actual friends and collaborators have written them much more eloquently already (see here for one from Ismeth Raheem, who co-founded the Young Artists Group with him). Rather, I was interested in his role as an artist at a time when Sri Lanka was grappling to express its own identity.

Post Independence

That period of time was around the 1950s, after Sri Lanka had gained its independence. As Sri Lanka moved away from colonial rule and a new, insidious nationalism emerged, its artists, architects and sculptors wondered how to map this political shift spatially - what did Sri Lankan design look like? 

There are many who would say that this is an impossible question to answer. As Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, Anoma Pieris writes, colonisation ‘left an indelible cultural imprint and bitter residue’ even post-independence. Perhaps the most resilient social inheritance was the class system, not to mention colonial-era laws (some of which, like the Vagrants Ordinance and Articles 365 and 365A of the Penal Code, are still in effect today). As a key signifier of social class, architecture reflected some of this tension. 

Architect Channa Daswatte writes that the colonial tradition did adopt local building methods and techniques, but introduced principles of classical planning to the construction of houses. (Classical architecture focuses on human’s connection to nature and symmetry. Distilled, it’s key principles are usefulness, durability and beauty. Another fun fact - while most would point to the classical principles of design originating from Greece and Rome, some architectural historians contend that Western builders may have appropriated some tenets from Egypt and Persia). This meant that by the end of the eighteenth century, Sri Lankan architecture had already been hybridised with Western classical planning principles. Each coloniser brought a shift in styles that was reflected in the buildings, particularly those that represented the state. Further complicating matters was that, as the nineteenth century progressed, Sri Lankan homes in the countryside began to imitate urban dwellings, with the same craftsmen working in both spheres, and as homeowners sought to imitate what were seen as more sophisticated styles. 

Nevertheless, after Independence, there was an opportunity for new styles and new art to emerge.

Tropical modernism

In 1954, the Department of Tropical Architecture was founded at the Architectural Association in London. Tropical architecture had already been a topic of discussion the year before, with a large conference being held on the topic. The department taught that modernism (a school of design that emerged in the 1920s that rejected traditional styles and ornamentation in favour of function, simplicity and rationality) should respond to the local environmental contexts. If the word tropical causes Sri Lankans to wrinkle their noses, they’ll be pleased to note that there has been some criticism about the school of thought itself. Tariq Jazeel writes about the ‘epistemiological violence’ of filtering Southasian landscapes through Euro-American theoretical tongues (think the New York Times’ coverage of Sri Lanka - that’s right, I went there). 

Courtesy Ashan Algama

A number of Sri Lankan architects studied at the Architectural Association at the time, including a name that became synonymous with the movement as well as a longtime friend and collaborator of Laki Senanayake's - the creator of Lunuganga, Geoffrey Bawa. Originally a lawyer, Geoffrey Bawa decided to become an architect after returning to settle in Sri Lanka. He drew from his learnings at the Architectural Association as well as his own experience to employ local materials that accounted for decay and Sri Lankan humidity. Bawa’s work has become synonymous with Sri Lankan architecture, but as Tariq Jaleel notes, his approach speaks to a “familiar narrative of postcolonial architectural and artistic adaptation”, one that several others attempted in Sri Lanka as well. 

Much of this reshaping was produced by and for the upper-middle-class. Anoma Pieris notes that the colonial period saw a ‘sharp division of private and public architecture’. Up until independence, much of public architecture was shaped by the Public Works Department - so it was in the domestic sphere that experimentation flourished.

Many of the architects now known for propelling tropical modernism forward were able to afford and benefit from education overseas before returning to put what they had learned into practise. This inevitably involved them turning to more local materials and occasionally, working with local craftsmen. 

A departure from the norm

Laki Senanayake was a departure from the norm as his colleague Ismeth Raheem recalls - while most architects at the time were products of the Architectural Association or of the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, Senanayake was largely self-taught. He was also multidisciplinary - creating art, sculpture, landscaped gardens, architecture - and later on, even a word game called Babel. Most of the profiles remembering him mentioned Diyabubula, the home and retreat he designed in Dambulla, named after the bubbling spring that feeds a system of over eight interconnected lakes and ponds, filled with his sculpture and surrounded by forest, where he would often entertain visitors and take interviews with journalists. 

Senanayake was fired from his first job as an architectural draftsman for encouraging his coworkers to unionise (his parents were both members of the left-leaning Lanka Sama Samaja Party - and his mother, Florence, was among the first women MPs). Luckily, Geoffrey Bawa noticed his talent, and hired him as an architectural assistant. 

Their partnership would pay rich dividends for Senanayake. One of his sculptures that left an impression were the lifesize copper and bronze sculptures snaking up the stairway at the Lighthouse hotel in Galle. Seeing it as a child, the empty eyes of the sculptures frightened me more than the weapons they carried - and I tried to stay as far away from the balustrade as possible. Senanayake chose to depict the Portugese clashing with Sri Lankans (apparently a reenactment of the Battle of Randeniwela, where the Portugese suffered a crushing defeat). In a video interview played at his memorial, Senanayake recounts how Bawa had originally asked him to paint a mural on the wall, but it being far too close to the opening of the hotel itself, he decided to render the battle in sculpture instead (fun fact, apparently the king playing the flute at the top could be a self portrait). He also laughs, recollecting Bawa’s shock when he saw the finished product - he had expected a small sculpture. On the other hand, his depictions of wildlife were less intimidating (and I have to admit that I still prefer them as an adult). In fact, he’s probably most widely known for his avian depictions, as his drawings were used on Sri Lankan currency. 

Paving the way

There were others working in different fields who, in one way or another, attempted to reinterpret techniques they learned to create something that was more Sri Lankan, though without receiving the same recognition. One of them was Minette de Silva, who also attended the Architectural Association as well as the Royal Institute of British Architecture and the International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM). As she observed, she was “really the youngest, a student and I think the first Asian to have appeared at CIAM”. In fact, at the 1947 CIAM conference, she found herself representing the whole IndoCeylon region, and was the only Eastern delegate. 

It’s only more recently that people have begun paying attention to Minette de Silva’s work  particularly in bringing tropical modernism to Sri Lanka. (You can read more about her in a book review published in Himal Southasian here, and in a piece on Marg, the magazine dedicated to the built, visual and performing arts here.)

How did she translate her learnings when she returned? We gain some idea of this from her writings describing the house she designed for Mrs A Amerasinghe in Kollupitiya: 

During the pirith ceremony, de Silva recounts that the priest made everyone laugh as he consoled the Amarasinghes as their house appeared unfinished - since he did not think there was enough decoration or walls to hold the thing up. 

The priest was perhaps speaking to a different heritage - since temples have long been (by design) full of colour and patterns, hanging curtains and cloth, often offering a complete contrast to nearby more simple residences. But in fact, as Channa Daswatte notes, open pavilions are quite Sri Lankan - from ambalamas dotting pilgrim routes to the stately magul maduwa (audience hall). These spaces were filled with only the utensils needed for daily life, with each of them beautifully crafted to suit their purpose. 

This principle was embraced by de Silva, Bawa and many others after, resulting in spaces where the boundaries of what’s considered ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ blur, and an emphasis on utilising local materials. Some of these included Geoffrey’s brother Bewis, who began designing his own home and garden Brief when serving in the Army, and Ulrick Plesner, the Dutch architect who worked in Minette de Silva’s office, who later became Geoffrey Bawa’s partner.

Fragmented histories

Outside of architecture, most would mention Ena de Silva, who popularised batik in Sri Lanka, creating the iconic ceiling at Bentota beach hotel, the tapestries at the Oberoi and the banners in Parliament, Barbara Sansoni and her distinctive handwoven fabric, the 43 Group of artists and the Melbourne Art Classes (named after Melbourne Avenue), which in turn helped spawn the Young Artists Group which Senanayake co-founded.  

Senanayake knew and collaborated with many of them during his life. The histories of many of these practitioners is fragmented, as Jyoti Dhar writes. It remains comparatively easy to find details about Bawa and Senanayake, while details on artists like Sybil Keyt, Sita Kulasekara, Sushila Wijeyasuriya, Swanee Jayawardene and many others are harder to come by. 

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