Geoffrey Bawa is the best-known Sri Lankan architect, being responsible for a remarkable range of projects over five decades of professional activity. By descent a Burgher – that is, a member of the affluent white European colonial class – he was always profoundly attached to the island of his birth. Originally training as a lawyer at Middle Temple in London, his life was redirected in the mid-1950s by studying at the Architectural Association. He pursued that new career with passion until his death in 2003.

Important projects designed by Bawa include the conversions and additions at Lunuganga, his own country residence with its extensive luxurious gardens, completed in stages between 1947 and 1998 on an estate some distance south of Sri Lanka’s capital of Colombo. At Lunuganga, he blended Sri Lanka’s sumptuous sub-tropical landscape with English picturesque landscaping and carefully wrought domestic structures. During the 1960s he built his own Japanese-influenced courtyard townhouse and architectural office in Colombo’s central district. Later still, Bawa designed the nation’s Parliamentary Complex: sitting on an island in a lake near Colombo, it was inaugurated in 1992 and was the most formal of all his projects.

Yet what made Geoffrey Bawa’s international reputation was a subtle series of upmarket luxury hotels, many situated along the western coast of the island in major tourist resorts – including, for instance, the Triton Hotel in Ahungalla (1981, expanded in the 1990s). Given Sri Lanka’s climate, these hotels were designed as far as possible around open terraces and balconies. Most dramatic of all is the Kandalama Hotel in Dambulla, which opened its doors in 1994 in a hilly forested area of tea plantations inland, close to the ancient rock-top fort at Sigiriya.

The rocky site was cleared for building, meaning that initially its simple but elegant black-painted concrete frame stood out proudly, even nakedly, in this natural environment. Soon enough, however, the encroachment of abundant trees and bushes resulted in this memorable example of Bawa’s architecture blending into the jungle-like vegetation. Today a constant maintenance process is needed to balance this verdant growth with the needs of the wealthy tourists staying in the hotel.