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By Laila Nasry
Be it medicine or law, accounting or architecture, once the cosseted life of a student comes to an end, the young professional is inevitably thrust into the world to either sink or swim. Carving out a niche, making a name and of course earning the ‘big bucks’ all by oneself can be a daunting challenge. Last week, the ‘Young Architects 2001’ exhibition held at the Barefoot Gallery gave the new entrants to the architectural field a chance to highlight their achievements and put their work on public view. The site was in Ella, in the midst of thick jungle. There was no approach road, no nearby village and no ‘modern conveniences’. Given a modest budget of Rs. five million, young architect Sunil Gunawardene was asked to build a hotel. “It was my first hotel and a very big challenge,” he recalls. “To start with, there were no survey plans or contour maps of the area and it boiled down to us marking the ground, measuring the trees and doing our own calculations.” Building around the river: the Ella adventure park Difficult terrain was not his only constraint. He knew he had to come up with a hundred percent success formula. For, he explains, a hotel was a business venture. “Unlike a home, it has to be marketable and at the end of the day, if it is not going to attract guests, it will be a failure.” The pressure was greater for the theme he had adopted was something new in the hospitality industry. “I thought I would give people that mental break they yearn for when they get away from the city to take a vacation.” And in his mind this meant a hotel contrary to the ordinary. A simple structure, basic to the point of having no proper doors and windows. No car park. No swimming pool. No modern amenities like A/C, TV or piped music. Sunil was taking a risk. “To find out its strengths, I spent mornings, afternoons and evenings at the site. I watched the sunrise and sunset, dawn and dusk. And I gradually started making the sketches.” The site’s natural beauty helped. “The river was the strongest point and I planned the structure around it.” He had decided on 12 ‘kutis’ (huts) like the ‘hene palpath’ of the area built on a ‘massa’ with thatched ‘illuk’ roofs, wedged between trees, instead of one large structure for that would have involved cutting the forest and clearing the land. All 12 huts were to be spread along the river strategically placed close to the shallow natural pools, which were to act as substitutes for the standard swimming pool. Curiosity was heightened by the absence of an approach road. “Vehicles had to be parked far off and guests would have a jungle trek to the hotel. Until they reached it, they would have no glimpse of it.” Construction started. No trees were cut. Soil erosion was curbed on the slopes with ‘kalugal’ used as the base of the structure. The four pillars supporting the roof were old wooden lampposts. All around it was open with leafy curtains for privacy. “We ran short of illuk for the ends of the last few ‘kutis’ so we used ‘pol athu’. Now we are growing illuk in the area because the roofs need to be changed once every five years. There was no necessity for landscaping,” Sunil adds. The end result: Ella Adventure Park, which bagged the Design Excellence Award and is now a renowned hideout for nature lovers. When the Fransiscan nuns approached Madumali Sumanadasa to build a Novitiate for them, little did she know what a challenge the task would be. “It was going to be like a hostel for the nuns and they wanted just the basics- a dormitory, dining hall, kitchen and chapel, within a budget of Rs 20 million.” February 2000; construction began. The plans were approved but it was the finishing touches that posed a hurdle. Taking her clients into consideration, she had envisaged a puristic, minimalistic approach. “Cement floors, unpainted doors and windows, pure white walls... architecturally different from a normal ‘building building’ but still within the realms of a novitiate.” However, the clients had other ideas. “They liked shiny tiles, old, elaborate Roman architecture, pastel shades and no black. It was difficult for me to explain and it was hard for them to decide solely on my word without seeing the finished effect,” Madumali recalls. The end result was a compromise. Her white walls gave way to buff, instead of the pastel shades the nuns had wanted. “A neighbouring structure had the buff, so I was able to show it to them.” However, thereafter the clients wanted the buff colour everywhere. No amount of coaxing permitted Madumali to use black with it. “But the structure was asymmetrical so there was no monotony.” The chapel however, was strikingly different, for it had no statues, only a large cross created by way of two walls not meeting, the vacuum lit by natural light from windows behind. “I believe a lot in light and love playing around with it.” “It was an experiment and a learning experience, with a new language, colour and clients,” says Madumali. It was to be a marketing centre, on the main Anuradhapura-Kekirawa road, for the people of RITICOE, a combined community organisation of five villages. “They were going to sell organic fruits, vegetables which they had grown. Herbal drinks, handicrafts, plants etc,” architect Madhawa Premaratne recalled. The site was lovely. “Kumbuka Sisila’ he had decided to call it for it was lined with Kumbuk trees alongside a body of water. “It was an ideal place for any traveller along the highway to rest, get a drink or food and move on. Madhawa had drawn up an open to the sky eating area, shaded by the Kumbuk trees beside which he had placed stalls for the vendors between the trunks of the row of trees. Unfortunately, the project did not go beyond the blueprint stage. The Asia Foundation, his client did not receive the land from the Pradeshiya Sabha as promised. “There was some political pull somewhere so the project fell through. I guess these things happen to architects,” he says.
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