House for Lidia Gunasekera
Bentota, Sri Lanka
Two houses built in 1720 and 1740 were adapted to serve contemporary needs by reorienting the building through the subtraction and addition of walls and doors. Both structures faced directly onto the main Colombo-Galle road in Bentota. The nearly five acre site lushly planted with ancient trees slopes from the high point of the main road to rice fields on the east side.

One of the houses remained in situ, although rotated so that it no longer looked to the street, while the other building across the street was carefully demolished and stripped of salvageable materials, for example framed doorways and windows as well as upper floor wooden columns.

The main house's changed orientation was just the first structural amendment. Exact drawings led to the erection of a staircase to reach the upper floor, which had served as a hard to reach storage place. Walls were removed, a verandah was added to the east side, and a blind wall built was built along the roadside to create privacy. The house itself was re-formed by replacing entire walls to the front and back verandah with sheet glass. This structural modification dramatized the effect of the antique wooden doors, that were made to appear as floating architectural objects.

Source:

Taylor, Brian Brace, ed. 1996. Houses. In Geoffrey Bawa. A Mimar Book, Concept Media, 66.
Location
87 Galle Road, Bentota, Sri Lanka
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1978-1980
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