Geoffrey Bawa was born in Colombo in 1919, the 2nd son of a wealthy Moslem lawyer called Benjamin Bawa & his Burger wife, Bertha Marion Schrader. The family lived in a large house on Darley Road & after attending Royal Collage, his father’s old school, he was dispatched to Britain in 1938 where he studied English at Cambridge and Law in London. finally returning to Colombo as a qualified lawyer in 1946, he realized that law wasn’t for him, Geoffrey Bawa set out eastwards on a world tour which brought him finally to the shores of Lake Garda in Italy. He bought an abandoned rubber estate near Bentota & set out to transform it into a Tropical version of an Italian Garden.
Later Geoffrey Bawa shifted to No.11, 33th Lane Colpetty & lived there for 40 years, in tandem with his weekend garden retreat at Lunuganga is functioned as his weekday town house – a pied a terre in which he could meet clients & spend time with friends. Lunuganga lies about 60Km’s inland from the coastal resort of Bentota. Lunuganga also functions as a country hotel & maintains the special ambience created by Geoffrey Bawa. No.11 is considered a special architecture marvel which also houses art & artefacts from the collection of Geoffrey Bawa.
The Gallery Café in Colombo is the most visited Geoffrey Bawa building in Sri Lanka. Also, it is special for another reason, it was the 1st to have an art gallery & restaurant within the same space that essentially complemented each other. Geoffrey Bawa's work was mainly in Sri Lanka, but included several other countries as well: 9 times in India, 3 times in Indonesia, 2 times in Mauritius and once in Fiji, and Singapore. His works include houses, hotels, schools, clubs, offices and government buildings, most notably the Sri Lankan Parliament Building, Seema Malaka-Colombo, Bishop’s Collage, University of Ruhuna, Heritance Kandalama, Heritance Ahungalla, Blue Water Hotel, Bentota Beach Hotel, Hilton Colombo, Galadari Hotel – Pakistan, Candoline Hotel-Goa, Panama Hotel-Panama etc. Geoffrey Bawa is considered as an Icon in Sri Lankan architecture. If you’re a architecture lover, travel with Tremendous Lanka & we have unique tailor-made packages for you to cover Bawa’s architecture.