Robust Architecture Workshop (RAW)

Started in 2011, when its two founders, Milinda Pathiraja and Ganga Rathnayake, returned home to Sri Lanka after ten years of studying and working in Melbourne, the Colombo-based Robust Architecture Workshop (RAW) is a veritable enfant prodige in the architecture sector. Over the course of its as-yet brief existence, the office has produced a remarkable collection of work, perhaps not by quantity (eight buildings completed and eight currently in development or under construction) but certainly in terms of professional acknowledgement and, hopefully, cultural influence.

In 2014, RAW entered the Lafarge Holcim Awards with its design for a community library in a former military camp in Ambepussa, at the centre of the island country; it won the