Coming up with treasures
Bentota Beach Hotel’s Heritage Experience takes visitors on an intimate Bawa tour
Last week, a group of art and architecture enthusiasts were treated to a preview of Dayanita Singh’s photographs of Lunuganga Chairs, at the Lunuganga Estate – especially verdant after the southwest monsoons. Singh’s photographs were the latest of the site-specific works to be added to the “The Gift: Installation Series” for the Geoffrey Bawa centenary celebrations.
A guided tour of the installations was led by the Lunuganga Trust Curator, Shayari de Silva, and Bawa 100 Programme Advisor and Chairperson of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust and the Lunuganga Trust, Channa Daswatte. The tour was a part of an intimate Bawa experience organized by Bentota Beach Hotel along with the Geoffrey Bawa Trust and the Lunuganga Trust.
The day-long programme combined art, architecture and food and was bookended by tours of two of Bawa’s most iconic properties. At Lunuganga Estate, visitors were taken through works already installed for the Bawa Centenary celebrations: Zephyrus’ Breath by Lee Mingwei, Symbiotic Organisms by Dominic Sansoni (a beautiful collection of photographs which guides the gaze towards the macro natural details of the sprawling estate), and KithulAmi by Kengo Kuma, a sculpture inspired by outdoor furniture designed by Bawa for Kandalama.
Visitors were then served a curated lunch at Bentota Beach Hotel by Chef Sunanda Kumar – the appetizer and dessert cleverly drawing inspiration from Lee Mingwei’s and Kengo Kuma’s sculptures and influences. A tour of the refurbished Bentota Beach Hotel which opened its doors in January this year as a five-star resort, and talks by Ismeth Raheem and Channa Daswatte were fitting conclusions for the day.
A highlight of the tour was undoubtedly the insights into the details of the art and architecture which marks the hotel. What sets apart the Bentota Beach Hotel’s renovation is the process of archiving the building, to preserve the ideas inherent in it. While renovating Bentota Beach Hotel, it became evident its original structure would not withstand a refurbishment and new additions. Constructed in the late 1960s, the hotel was Sri Lanka’s first purpose-built resort hotel and has been lauded as a model for hotel design in tropical climates. The subsequent archival of the hotel was inspired by the careful dismantling of the structure of the Osmund and Ena de Silva House in Colombo and reassembling it in a different location, undertaken by the Lunuganga Trust in an effort to preserve it.
The Bentota Beach Hotel, Daswatte explained, was a reflection of the “wonderful magpie picking” that Bawa had done, dipping into divergent traditions and drawing inspiration from everything from the kaludiya pokuna to the Padmanabhapuram palace to create one of the most influential buildings in modern Asian architecture.
“When a building has a series of ideas that are worth preserving but the building itself cannot be conserved in the usual way, perhaps archiving it is the way forward. Bentota Beach Hotel was one such important building that could not be justifiably conserved in a traditional manner but was still too precious to see destroyed and lost forever. For me, it was some of the wonderful ideas that were embedded in the building that moved me to propose to the hotel company that we should actually do what we did here,” explained Daswatte, whose practice MICD Associates carried out the renovations.
There is art beckoning at every corner of the hotel and those familiar with Bawa would be quick to recognize some of his frequent artistic collaborators. The lovingly reproduced Ena de Silva batik ceiling panels recreated under the guidance of Chandra Aluvihare, Director of the Aluvihare Heritage Centre, Architect Amila de Mel and Designer Roshan Rajapakse is the first feature, drawing visitor’s eyes to a ceiling that is a riot of colour. Paintings by Ismeth Raheem adorn the lobby and the newly opened Bawa suite, some of which are reproduced from the artist’s meticulously organized archives of his paintings which dotted the hotel originally. A peacock sculpture by Laki Senanayake (restored by Bandu Manamperi) takes pride of place near a stairway while Barefoot handloom fabric can be seen in the hotel’s interiors.
The new additions to the hotel also take its cues from Bawa’s design ethos and place Sri Lankan art and design at the heart of the architecture. The hotel features inter-disciplinary work by Ajith Perera, Sameera Kalupahana, Bandu Manamperi, Sanjeewa Kumara, Sujith Rathnayake, Himanshi Wijeweera, Marie Gnanaraj, Sonali Dharmawardena, Nilanka Perera, Kingsley Gunatillake and Dominic Sansoni.
Cinnamon Resorts has been careful to balance old and new with the hotel. A part of the Bentota Beach Hotel is a functional heritage monument while the new additions reflect the contemporary requirements of a seaside resort – a banquet hall, additional restaurants, more rooms, another swimming pool – enhancing instead of impinging on the original structure.
“It’s a nod to the past but it’s also really about the now,” notes Channa Daswatte.
Various Heritage Experiences by Bentota Beach Hotel will be conducted monthly. For more information: https://www.cinnamonboxoffice. com/ or 0717118111
“The Gift: Installation Series” commemorating Geoffrey Bawa’s 100th birthday will continue at the Lunuganga Estate till January 31, 2021. An installation by Chandragupta Thenuwara is scheduled to be added later this month:https:// bawa100.com/The-Gift