Introduction

Introduction

In the early days of civilization, architecture is only meant to be a shelter of protection which is built with the help of the locally available materials and it differs from time to time and region to region. Andrew leach quoted “history reminds us that things in the present days are not largely different from how it has been in the past , our present day is the same as the world of past which invoked the aphorism by Burckhardt that ‘history is on every occasion the record of what one age finds worthy of note in another’” (1) . If we see from the perspective of vernacular architecture style, it is timeless because the basic foundations of vernacular architecture of a specific place remains unchanged though the course of time. It is the type of architecture which is only dependent on culture, surrounding nature and geography. During late 19 th century when modernity in architecture is corrupting the existing heritage and cultural diversity, ‘regionalist architects’ tried to reduce the complexity of modernism. Geoffrey Bawa is one of the ‘regionalist architect’ from Srilanka who gave modernism a new identity by blending modernity with existing vernacular architecture style of Srilanka in a very romantic way which is also known as ‘Tropical Modernism’. The aim of this essay is to re-evaluate Geoffrey Bawa’s style of architecture and how critical regionalism is depended on vernacular architecture, also discussing various theories of romanticism and it’s evidence in works of Geoffrey Bawa, who is known to be the father of Srilankan Architecture.

1. Andrew Leach “Contemporary History and Past History”, What Is Architectural History? Oxford: Polity Press, 2010: 91-92, (Accessed June 7, 2020). ProQuest EBook Central,