It was a fabulous life. Bawa had three major commissions at the time, and he had created individual offices for each of them. My job was a major hotel. There was also a new university in Ruhunu, in the south of the island, and, of course, the new Parliament building for the recently independent nation. All of the design offices were accommodated in Bawa-designed residences, which he then purchased back to use for business. 

Since I had studied in Vienna, I was familiar with opulent palaces bursting with imperial splendor. Still, the grandeur, elegance and simultaneous simplicity of Bawa’s buildings were overwhelming. A close connection to place and nature was ever-present. Being in a Bawa building made you feel as if you were not in a building at all, but rather in a beautiful garden.

Bawa’s houses started with tall walls surrounding each property. There was no setback to neighbors or the street—every square inch of available land was captured. Inside this enclosure, the design loosely arranges an assembly of structures that are certainly a “house” by function, but one that could never be seen from the outside. The houses were more of a compound that related to all the garden spaces on the property in different and magical ways. There rarely were tight insect screens or glazed windows, and no AC, as the climate is tropical and constant airflow, in addition to shade, was a necessity for comfort. Pools and fountains were placed such that their evaporative cooling was then channeled through the homes. It all felt timeless and modest, although comparing them by size to traditional Western manor homes, they could certainly stack up.

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The mood at the office was usually lighthearted but dedicated. People worked long hours and enjoyed it. I had good hand-drawing skills and sketched overdressed, out-of-place European visitors into the sections, plans, and renderings. This amused Bawa. We spent long afternoons discussing the direction of a project with him, and evenings committing it to paper.1

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• 1. I learned about amazing local craftsmen’s skills. While working on the hotel, Bawa disappeared for a few days. I was told he went to Burma to purchase teak trees, which then arrived in the next weeks on the construction site, cut into 4-inch-thick slabs. There were few power tools on the site, and I went back to the office and immediately proceeded to detail the hotel with my central European knowledge, and central European materials. Bawa laughed, and asked me to wait until we got back on site. When we did, we found amazing products which local teams had made out of the teak slabs, with hand tools. There were balustrades, windows, doors, and furniture, with wicker woven seats. “Your details would not last a season here in our climate,” he said to me. “We have traditional methods that will.” And so I stood in awe at technical assemblies that included plasters with animal hair reinforcements and connectors that used no metal, as the salty tropical air would make short shrift of them.