The grand finale of the fourth cycle of the Geoffrey Bawa Award 2016/2017 for Excellence in Architecture will be held on Sunday, July 23, at Park Street Mews, Colombo, to announce the winner of the iconic award.
The award winner will be presented with the prestigious Geoffrey Bawa trophy and Rs. 1,000,000 in cash by the Chairperson of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust.
The awards ceremony this year marks the 98th birth anniversary of the renowned architect. The awards were conceptualised in 2007 and three cycles of the Awards, have been held since, in 2010/11, 2007/2008 and 2013/2014.
The awards have made significant contributions towards enhancing contemporary architecture in Sri Lanka.
Australian artistic photographer, painter and sculptor, Fiona Hall, will deliver the keynote address.
Of the 65 projects submitted for the award, 11 have been shortlisted. The judging panel for the 2016/17 cycle comprises distinguished Singaporean architect Mok Wei Wei, Ward Beling who represents the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, D.H. Wijewardene, President elect of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects, and Sharmini Perera of Raking Leaves, founder of the Sri Lanka Archives for Art, Architecture & Design, Jaffna, who is the informed lay person.
Deshamanya Geoffrey Bawa is recognised as having been among the greatest Asian architects of the second half of the 20th century and one of the most significant Sri Lankans of his time.
He was Sri Lanka's most influential and prolific architect and South Asia's leading guru of tropical architecture. Within a span of about 50 years, he created a wide range of architectural works, mostly in southwest Sri Lanka, which established a prototypes for buildings in newly independent Sri Lanka.
He designed about thirty hotels, twelve of them in Sri Lanka, and contributed enormously to the image that Sri Lanka projected to the rest of the world. Many guide books to the island now include his buildings as ‘must see’ places and rate his hotels as being among the best on the island. Bawa also built in many other Asian countries including India, Indonesia and Mauritius.The Geoffrey Bawa Awards for Excellence in Architecture celebrate the life and work of the renowned architect whose name they carry.
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