Bawa qualified as a barrister in London, bought a derelict rubber estate at Bentota in 1948 meaning to make an Italian garden of it, discovered he did not know how, and went back to England at thirty-eight to train as an architect. Lunuganga became the forty-year laboratory. From Colombo he then built the case for tropical modernism as a way of thinking rather than a style: rooms with no fourth wall, courtyards that ventilate, roofs that shade, a route through a building composed like a garden walk. Parliament at Kotte, Seema Malaka, the Ruhuna campus, the Kandalama hotel. He received the Aga Khan Chairman’s Award in 2001. His practice is the reason Sri Lankan architecture is discussed at all outside Sri Lanka.
