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Dambulla, a small city in central Sri Lanka
In the heart of the Dambulla jungle,
there is a building that harmoniously blends with nature.

This building stretches along the forest ridge,
and its outer walls are covered in vines.
The massive rocks that were originally part of the area now serve as walls,
blurring the boundary between inside and outside.
Unexcavated rocks protrude from the building’s floors like natural works of art.

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Inside, there are no doors or windows aside
from necessary partitions and screens.
Visitors can experience nature through all their senses from anywhere.
Animals living in the forest freely move in and out.

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This building is the Heritance Kandalama Hotel
designed by Geoffery Bawa (1919-2003) in 1991.

Geoffrey Bawa kept the natural contours of the land and integrated the building with the terrain.
He boldly eliminated glass frames to facilitate natural ventilation considering the tropical climate, allowing water to flow naturally along the building’s slopes.
The water used in the hotel is purified and returned to the lake.
During construction, not a single rock was excavated,
and Bawa decided to relocate trees instead of cutting them down.

The inconspicuous nature of this building is not just its appearance
resembling nature.
It is the result of Bawa’s architectural philosophy
of keeping the original state of the building with
minimal invasion rather than controlling nature,
and allowing it as a vessel to experience and enjoy nature.

“He taught me not to take architecture too seriously.
The most important thing is life itself.
For Geoffrey Bawa, architecture was secondary or irrelevant.
Nature is a challenging presence to architects in South Asia.
There’s absolutely no scenario where the natural environment becomes
the driving force of architecture.
Geoffrey Bawa had a perspective that set him apart from other architects.”

- From the interview with C. Anjalendran * -

* A student of Geoffrey Bawa and works as an architect.
He gained international fame with simple and open architecture and developed the concept of “invisible architecture” with influence from Geoffrey Bawa.

Go to Archive Collection
You can access the video architecture records of Geoffrey Bawa and oral records from related officials.

Go to VR of the Permanent Exhibition of the Asia Culture Museum
You can experience panoramic VR of Geoffrey Bawa’s major architectural works.