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“People often think of Sri Lanka as “India light” and they come for the beach and hot weather,” says James Jayasundera, a Sri Lankan by birth and the founder of UK-based Ampersand Travel. “But Sri Lanka also has a strong modern design and architectural history that’s often overlooked.”
In particular, design enthusiasts will revel in the legacy of Sri Lanka’s foremost architect, Geoffrey Bawa (1919-2003), who over his nearly 50-year career imprinted his own unique interpretation of Tropical Modernism onto the island.
David Robson, an architect, scholar and Bawa friend, has written extensively about the Ceylon-born architect whose privileged, colonial heritage — Arab and British on his father’s side, and Dutch Burgher and Sinhalese on his mother’s — afforded the tall, debonair gay man, who drove a Rolls Royce and favored boldly colored shirts and ironed slacks, a British education at Cambridge where he was known for his strikingly designed suite of rooms.
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