Highlighting the thrill of flying kites at Galle Face Green and the joy of the festive season, two young designers come up with a unique Christmas tree
It’s a gleaming silver white Christmas tree, glinting with dazzling rainbow hues.Take a closer look and you will see that the tree is, in fact, made of a number of shimmering kites.
The tree of kites which stands tall at the Galle Face Hotel was conceptualised and created by two young designers Sasha Pinto Jayawardena and Charith De Silva - from the advertising agency Triad and the decor consulting and production agency Maic - respectively. Given the task of designing this year’s Christmas tree at the GFH, the team came up with this futuristic creation.
The design symbolises an experience which most anyone living in Colombo (and even many living out of Colombo) would be familiar with - flying kites on the Galle Face Green. “When we tried to fly kites in other places they would get caught in telephone poles and street lights so going to the Galle Face Green meant freedom to just fly our kites with so much space,” explains Sasha.
“The kites were always there. I lived in Mount Lavinia so when I was small, I used to have the feeling that the kites at Galle Face Green flew from Mount Lavinia and went back in the evening,” laughs Charith. The Galle Face Hotel, which got its name from the Green, has always had a view of the kites and so Charith and Sasha felt it was a great connection to create a unique tree.
They also felt that the emotions associated with kite flying and Christmas are similar. “The joy and happiness of flying a kite is close to the joy and happiness we feel during the season with Christmas,” says Charith.
Conceptualizing a tree of kites was exciting and inspiring, but making the tree was not easy. The team first designed and created one kite with an iron frame, metal
sheets ( thahadu), holographic material and rope. As the General Manager of the Galle Face Hotel Robert Hauck is German, the team wanted to create something which was inspired by the Baroque style of architecture and its colour theme, deciding on the ornate pastel hues blended with white and gold embellishments associated with the Baroque style.
Holographic material would work best they felt because while it has an elegant silvery hue, it also reflects light, creating rainbow hues that capture the lightness and magic associated with flying a kite.“We also took into consideration the interior colour theme of the hotel we needed something contemporary but which would also retain the grace and elegance of this historic hotel,” explains Sasha.
Choosing the material and actually working with it were two different things, the team soon found out. “It was a challenging material to work with --transporting it, pasting it. It’s a sensitive material so it could easily scrape and get damaged,” explains Charith. This is when they decided to attach the holographic material to metal sheets. All of the material used to build the tree was sourced in Sri Lanka.
The team then worked on a frame which could support the kites and settled on an iron rod structure. A team of metalsmiths at Maic worked on the structure and then each kite was placed on the tree, the team working on the angles and manually figuring out how each