A 'lost' Sri Lanka rebuilt

Anjalendran: Architect of Sri Lanka

By David Robson

Photography by Waruna Gomis

Published by Tuttle Publishing

Available at leading bookshops

Reviewed by Manote Tripathi

 The Nation

 It's quite rare to see a mentor write a paean to his student. But Anjalendran, the subject of this book, is a rare breed of architect, and one of the closest associates of Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka's best-known designer and one of Southeast Asia's most influential practitioners, celebrated for his "tropical modernism".

 What matters about Anjalendran is not this association, but his survival as an architect in Sri Lanka over the past 25 years, and his commitment to bringing style and elegance to a country otherwise known for suicide bombings and ethnic unrest.

 Why is it, though, that an architect known for his simplicity and minimalism is given a thorough examination in this coffee-table tome by a respected English architecture lecturer, when most books about architects and architecture go for glamour?

 The answer is simple: Anjalendran is unlike any architect we know, says author David Robson, a former lecturer at the Colombo School of Architecture. Anjalendran was one of his first-year students.

 If architecture is more about space and less about material, as Anjalendran insists, then it's fitting to find less here about the architect and more about his philosophy and practice. In this, this book covers quite a lot of ground, not just architecture but other key fundamentals that have shaped his country and his practice.

 More than a story of Sri Lankan architecture, the book is about the "Lost Paradise" that one man vows to restore. That man is Anjalendran, which is all the more interesting considering that many of his fellow architects chose to leave the island for good.

 Anjalendran's maternal side belongs to a tight group of Tamil families of the Vellala caste who lived in and around the village of Nallur on the eastern edge of Jaffna.

 Originally farmers, they owed their wealth and prominence to the fact that their ancestors had worked as shroffs - senior government servants - under the Dutch and the British.

 Their traditional Jaffna houses were arranged in a sequence of rooms and covered verandahs around courtyards, reflecting their strict spatial hierarchies and taboos related to gender and caste.

 During the latter half of the 19th century these families sent their children to the new missionary schools in Jaffna, paying lip service to Christianity while remaining committed Hindus.

 Anjalendran's maternal grandfather was the famous mathematician and politician Suntharalingam, educated at University College London and Balliol College at Oxford before reading law at Gray's Inn and qualifying as a barrister.

 Anjalendran grew up speaking English as his first language, Singhalese his second. He never came to use Tamil as his spoken language, though he learned to read and write it.

 After graduating from the Royal College prep school in 1957, he entered the Colombo School of Architecture in 1973 and University College London in 1974, where he graduated with an MSc.

He returned to his homeland in 1977 to work with Geoffrey Bawa as his assistant.

 In his younger days, Anjalendran was a dancer who developed a fascination for flexigrams - polygons made from folded paper that change their faces as they're flexed.

 Later he became adept at the Japanese art of origami, which explains his prowess in turning two-dimensional material into three-dimensional forms through sheer simplicity and minimalism.

 That's why he differs from many great architects like Bawa, who, the author says, inspired rather than influenced his career. Anjalendran's clients are less affluent than Bawa's, his sites smaller, his designs less self-conscious, more down to earth. He celebrates "everyday architecture".

 The materials are less important than the space itself. It's a surprise to see that he's among the few architects who never sign contracts, operate without bank accounts, use mobile phones and are accompanied by entourages of specialists.

 For 25 years he has worked from home with no secretary, and run almost every job on-site from beginning to end.

 It's during these years that civil war has taken hold of his country of 20 million, three-quarters of whom are Sinhalese, one-fifth Tamil.

 Despite being a Tamil himself, the architect has a large circle of friends from different ethnic groups. He subscribes to the ideal of a unitary but pluralist Sri Lanka.

 Robson relates how on one occasion, with the country reeling in the aftermath of an insurrection, Anjalendran set out a on three-week journey to explore parts of the lost paradise with four fellow students.

 While many of his Tamil friends have left the country, Anjalendran has stayed on, maintaining that he's first and foremost a Sri Lankan and second a Tamil - and that he is an architect of Sri Lanka.

 Anjalendran has kept busy building more verandahs, sitting rooms and courtyards based on his Jaffna heritage. Looking at his designs, one realises the lost paradise has been found.