Geoffrey Bawa 01 / Blend architecture with the surroundings

Two months ago I went to Sri Lanka and visited eight buildings designed by Geoffrey Bawa. I arrived at the Airport (Bandaranaike International Airport) in the middle of the night. So,on the first day, I stayed at a hotel near the airport.Next day I moved to the "Cultural Triangle"

 (Sri Lanka’s Cultural triangle is situated in the centre of the island and covers an area which includes the World Heritage cultural sites of the Sacred City of Anuradhapura, the Ancient City of Polonnaruwa, the Ancient City of Sigiriya, the Ancient City of Dambulla and the Sacred City of Kandy.  wikipedia)

I stayed at the Kandalama Hotel designed by Bawa in  the "Cultural Triangle". 

Channa Daswatte who was closely involved with Bawa on the Kandalama Hotel project wrote about the hotel.

 "The building  itself visually disappers into a series of vertical frame and horizontal frames that bring out the best of the views." 

I completely agree with his opinion.

I feel the hotel was designed by a very different process from normal buildings. In many cases, architects design hotel from the exterior. It is almost automatically fixed by cost and building regulations. 

After, architects put guest rooms in the appropriate place in the fixed form 

Then, they decide corridor to efficiently connect each guest room.

However my guess is that Bawa designed the hotel in reverse order. In the design process, what Bawa did first was find the best view points at the site.He made frames to bring out the best view and put guest rooms behind the frames. In the guest rooms, windows were designed not as a  hole in the wall but a frames to bring out the views.

In the Kandalama Hotel, the corridors were designed as not as effective passageways but a enjoyable walking trails in the rainforest. Walking the corridors were interesting. They had many different type of scenes.There were bright corridors like walking in the sky and  dark corridors walking in the cave in other places.The corridors has a sightseeing place, a big sculpture, and small rest stations.

Bawa designed the hotel not influenced by external elements like cost and building regulations, but considering where is the vest view points and how to connect these view points. I guess Bawa didn't design one building, but he carefully put minimum architectural elements to make the most of the site's attractive features 

These days,there are many buildings that have the latest enviromental-frindly features and many companies compete how enviromental-frindly their buildings are. The Kandalama Hotel doesn't have the latest features. I guess energy efficiency for air conditioning is not as good compared to the latest buildings. However I clearly felt closer to nature in the Kandalama hotel than any other luxurious hotel. Bawa attempted to blend the building with the surroundings.

The Kandalama Hotel taught me that 

"There were two aspects in enviromental-frindly features. One was physical capability or efficiency of the building. The other is how comfortable the quests feel being close to the nature. We architect have to care about both aspects."