Sri Lanka

For an architect who didn’t qualify until he was 38, Geoffrey Bawa achieved astounding prolificacy during his 40-year career. Bawa, who died in 2003, abandoned law (his father’s vocation), retrained in the UK, then started out designing private homes in Colombo, his hometown. This segued into commissions for public buildings, progressed into a number of significant hotels and resorts, then returned to the public arena with Kotte Parliament and Seema Malaka Buddhist temple, both in Colombo. Bawa’s projects populate the capital, scatter the length of the country, and are found in Mauritius, Indonesia, Fiji, India, the Maldives, Singapore, Pakistan and Egypt.

Throughout his decades of productivity, Bawa still found time to develop ‘Number 11’, his Colombo residence, and ‘Lunuganga’, his six-hectare