geoffrey bawa: the future works

I bet you heard about the plan to demolish the Ena De Silva house to make way for a Car park for the Durdens Hospital. It's quite hard to get the logic behind such a move but when it comes to private property and what their owners intend to do, it's not for others to pass judgments. Still it's sad to see an iconic piece of architecture disappear from Colombo.

There are talks of trying to re-erect this house in University of Moratuwa premises with the help of people who are willing to part with some of their cash for the purpose. The university intends to turn it into a museum and it sounds like the best option compared to seeing it vanish from the face of the planet forever.

Yesterday (26th), the house was opened to the public for the last time before the contractors moved in. It is quite disturbing when such things happen and we can see it happening with other rare gems in the future. So what can we do?

I believe it will be useful to decide what to do with a building when it’s no longer 'fit-for-purpose'. It might be useful to consider this at the inception and imbibe ideas of 'after-life' into the design itself. We can see this happening in other parts of the world where they talk about a 'life-span' of a building, then design and construct in such a way something useful can arise at the demise of the building.

It might also be interesting to see how the architect, in this instance the late great Bawa would've reacted to see one of his first masterpieces (I have no doubt that this is one of the Best pieces of Modern houses in the world) perish in the face of rapid urbanisation to make way for a car park for a private hospital next door?

If these acts are allowed to happen without any resistance, others too will follow.

What rights can the public exercise to preserve something of great value to its history, culture and heritage when the legal ownership is held by a private entity?