Geoffrey Bawa: It is Essential to be There is the first major exhibition which draws from the archives to look at Bawa’s practice. Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa (1919–2003) inadvertently began his practice as an architect, while practicing as a lawyer, with the purchase of an abandoned rubber and cinnamon estate, which he transformed into the garden that is now Lunuganga. From this first project in 1948, in the wake of the country’s newly gained independence from the British Empire, the practice is marked by architecture that seeks to uncover multivalent notions of place. Organized in four thematic sections exploring relationships between ideas, drawings, buildings and places, the exhibition examines the different ways in which images were used in Bawa’s practice.
