A house built for fun stands tall
Surprised to have been included in the prestigious Phaidon Atlas of ‘20th Century World Architecture’, for one of his wellknown early creations, the Lagoon House, one of Sri Lanka’s foremost architects talks to of his Bawa years and belief in a simple l
r- l laughs. The site genera ated a sense of fun a and energy, 52 perches b by the Lunawa lagoon. T The approach was th through 26 shanty h homes and he was ca careful that it should no not stick out but rather do dovetail with the surro roundings. From the la lagoon side, people co could walk in, there wa was no fence along the wa water boundary. But the therein was a contradictio tion…for it became a for fortress at night, when shu shut, the lagoon views visible only from roof tops and a few fixed glass windows.The rest was solid masonry. It was a courtyard house with a mirror-like pool at the heart of it, ‘like a large emerald gemstone within a coarse granite border”, part of it, open to the sky. The immediate garden was wild –filled with mangroves and boulders, where kabaragoyas and ratsnakes would come calling. The large shuttered windows had magical views of the garden with its huge boulders, the lagoon and even the ocean.
He likens it to a jewel box which you open and look and close…the jewel being the outside. Great simplicity, great tranquility.
Thankfully he says his wife Sundarika gave him the freedom to create as his fancy took him. “My wife knew it was my childlike fantasy and I wanted to explore every idea I had been trained in and gifted with…that sense of fun!
Lots of lovely people came to that house, he remembers. Geoffrey Bawa and Ulrik Plesner, the architectural giants he regards as his mentors– they opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate it. Students would come too, it was a pilgrimage of sorts. But when practical considerations of travel time to Colombo weighed in with his young son’s schooling, he had no qualms about moving on, though he recalls Bawa telling him that the house would be difficult to sell. It was… it took him all of three years to find a buyer.
Anura Ratnavibhushana trained as an architect in the Institute of Practical Technology, Katubedde (now the University of Moratuwa) where he first encountered Bawa, Plesner and Justin Samarasekera (with whom he also briefly worked) then won a 26-month scholarship to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark to do his post-graduate studies. From his second year at architectural school he was invited by Bawa to work part-time with him and by the time he was in his third year, he was a regular at Edwards, Reid and Begg, Bawa’s office, a close and fruitful association that would continue for 12 years, even when he returned from Denmark.
The connection with Bawa he still cherishes. That Bawa held him in high regard and entrusted him with many significant commissions is evident. One dedication in a book of Bali murals Bawa gifted him reads, “To Anura…with many years of admiration”. Yet he is reluctant to talk of what was a very personal relationship in his early years. “I have no authority to talk about him, though I knew him like my father. I was the first architectural student he took over from the school and worked for 12 years directly as his assistant. It was a period of great learning.”
It was the golden era of modernity in Sri Lanka with Bawa and Plesner from whom he, Ismeth Rahim and others directly learnt the methodology of doing things, he reflects. “The poetry was Geoffrey, the inspiration came from Geoffrey. Plesner had both but he also taught us how to get about doing things, the functional aspects, like the dimensions of chairs, tables, doors, toilets, all needed practically. Their genius was anchored by the engineering skills of Dr. K. Poologasundram, a partner in the firm whom he remembers with admiration as the ‘ultimate’ architect’s engineer.
It was too a renaissance age when they had the privilege of working with great artistic minds like Barbra Sansoni, Ena de Silva, Laki Senanayake, so buildings were adorned, enhanced by art.
Years later in 1992 Bawa would curate an exhibition ‘Objects that Enhance Architecture’ as his own maiden venture for the Bawa Trust bringing together some of these legendary names to which Ratnavibhushana too was invited to contribute, though he himself lays no claim to being an artist. His was an installation of motor vehicle parts ‘Crank-shafts in blue and green’.
“Geoffrey never taught.He would give a whole idea in two words and it would be profound and funny,” he says, describing him as instinctive and intuitive above all. He recalls an incident during the Expo ’70 Ceylon pavilion in Osaka, Japan where ER&B did the concept in Colombo and it was built by Mitsui in Japan. “Huge modern glass boxes, they made. We described serenity through a Vesak sort of mood of light..pure white. The only objects were gems, temple murals and ancient Polonnaruwa statues. The wall mural was from a Buddhist temple in the south, it was photographed here and Geoffrey took the slides and gave it to the Japanese to blow up.” He smiles as he recalls Bawa’s description of how the next morning he was confronted with three bowing gentleman who had a problem: all the pictures were out of focus. Bawa’s answer was typical of his laconic wit: Everything in Ceylon is out of focus, he told them.
After the Bawa years, Ratnavibushana went overseas for a brief stint in Nigeria and on his return joined Design Group 5, to work part-time with architects of the calibre of Gemunu Fernando, Suranjith de Silva, Ashley de Vos, Tudor Sirisena, Suren Wickramasinghe and Tanya Wickramasinghe. In the 80’s and 90’s he was with Mihindu Keerthiratne Associates before launching on his own in 1997.
At 72 now, he still has sheer enjoyment in his work. His autobiography, ‘Creating Simplicity’ released in 2009 sought to present many of the concepts, influences and inspiration he has pondered on and distilled over the years and which he takes delight in sharing with others, his young architectural students eager beneficiaries of his mercurial mind. It was with them that he tried the ‘experiment’ in his garden, of building with glass, wanting to see how the modern ‘bake-houses’ as he called it would work. Visually smart, yes, he agrees but he grappled with the inherent issues of maintaining privacy, the immense heat and technology problems. They were solved but at a cost, which leads him back to what he believes is an answer to many of our current woes- simple living.
Technically you can fix anything but sustainability cannot be fixed by technology alone. We have to change our lifestyles. We have to become frugal. This ‘me, me, me’ concept is a philosophy alien to this society, he says emphatically urging a rediscovery of great thinkers like Ananda Coomaraswamy, our greatest exponent of the East to the West.
“Despite our emphasis on ‘bio this and bio that’ if we continue to live the same way, we will continuously pollute. We have to become more simple. We have enough food, water, we have four major religions..all of whom propound austerity. If we don’t grasp this, if we think we can techno-fix our lives out of this, by pretending we can live the same way…it’s an endless disaster.”
His own house in the heart of the city is well shrouded in green and a great proponent of using the natural environment in design, he is delighted with Colombo’s current transformation into a greener city. “Some places are magical…take a walk along Independence Square,” he urges, saying the happiness of people is visible. He talks of Rob Krier, a visionary city planner who wanted a city to be planned in such a way that you, your family your friends and others can take joy in using it
Colombo’s greening, he hopes is being done without wastage, stressing the need to recycle, reuse and reduce. The planners, architects, engineers and visionaries all have to have a sense of ethics and conscience and make sure they don’t abuse materials like rocks, cement and concrete. Use more green things…Or what are our children and grandchildren going to be left with, he asks.
His own childhood was, as he says in his book, as interesting as any child could wish for. His engineer father and mother took their nine children travelling all through the ancient cities and hill country, instilling at a very early stage the appreciation for nature, ancient places and books, all of which have stayed with him. He schooled mainly at Kingswood, Kandy and at Hindu College, Trincomalee for a couple of years where he remembers the outdoors with appreciation “we sat and learnt under a tree” and wonders why today’s parents scarcely set any store by such simple pleasures. Children today are ‘lovingly harassed’ as he terms it by their parents into an endless round of activities which leaves them no time to wonder and dream.
An austere simplicity in lifestyle, sensitivity to the environment, these are what Anura Ratnavibhushana with all his wealth of experience believes we must return to. The Lagoon House, Phaidon’s pick, reflected these principles, some 30 years ago.
20th Century World Architecture is available at M.D. Gunasena’s.