Minnette De Silva. Sri Lankan. Modernist.
- tipsy modernist
- Jun 26
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 27
Mother of Regional Modernism. First Female Architect of Sri Lanka.
Minnette De Silva is having a moment, with articles written on her in every trendy design magazine from Elle Decor to Wallpaper. Similarly to Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, her form of modernism emphasizing local craft traditions and indigenous building techniques was incredibly prescient, although the importance of her work is only now getting the acknowledgment it deserves. Unlike Lina Bo Bardi, very few of her buildings remain due to the lack of recognition at the time of her death. How is it that this woman who was so celebrated in her youth, who socialized with Le Corbusier, and graduated from the Architecture Association, died in relative obscurity? Well, the familiar combination of sexism and racism combined forces so that she did not get the recognition she deserved in her own country or abroad until she was almost eighty years old. Unlike Lina Bo Bardi who was married, or Eileen Gray who was extremely wealthy, Minnette De Silva did not have the resources or connections to ensure the success of her business or her architectural legacy.
Minnette was in born in Kandy, Sri Lanka's second largest city in 1918 to an upper middle class family in what was then Ceylon. Her parents were extremely cosmopolitan and very active in the movement for Independence as well as the universal franchise movement. Her father, a lawyer, was president of the Ceylon National Congress and was a prominent politician in the post-Colonial government. Her mother Agnes Nell was a member of the Burgher community (a Eurasian ethnic community typically Christian, descended from Dutch, English and Portuguese colonialists) and campaigned for the women's sufferage movement and was also very active in Sri Lanka's arts and crafts movement. Despite this sophisticated environment, her parents were not very supportive of her desire to be an architect. In her autobiography she recalls her father saying,“Women architects indeed!” 1
But Minnette was incredibly determined. At the age of twenty she interned at the office of Public Works and then moved to Bombay to work in the office of Mistri and Bhedwar. Perin Mistri, one of the first women in India to practice architecture, was her colleague and mentor. By 1941 she was studying at the Government College of Architecture in India. She participated in the Quit India protests, which resulted in her being expelled from the College of Architecture. As WWII loomed and civil unrest between Indian and Sri Lanka mounted, Minnette continued to work between the two countries. In 1945 she moved in with her sister Anil (in Bombay) with whom she founded the journal Marg, the first progressive arts journal in South Asia, along with writer Mulk Raj Anand. Despite her expulsion from architecture school she was able to take the fourth year exams which then qualified her to study at the
Architectural Association in London. She studied at the AA from 1945-1947, and as a beautiful young woman dressed in traditional saris, always with a flower behind one ear, she obviously stood out from the other students and garnered quite a bit of attention. In 1947 she attended the CIAM (Congress International des Architects Modernes) as an editor of Marg, where she met Le Corbusier. They became lifelong friends and corresponded until he died. In 1948 she became a Royal Institute of Architects Associate. Regional Modernism
Her first commission in 1947 was to design the home of her father's law partner
Algernon Karunaratne in Kandy. She founded her Studio of Modern Architecture that same year. The modernist influence is very clear in her manipulation of the section to create multiple spaces or zones in a smaller floor plate. The use of glass block and the reinforced concrete support columns are also clearly modernist. But she also incorporated traditional Sri Lankan crafts such as Dumbara weaving in all her projects for floor and wall coverings, and even door panels.
In this photo of the porte cochere and carport of the Pieris House we can see many examples of Minnette's regional vernacular in this modernist villa. The terra cotta tiles with a Kandyan dancer motif were made locally and the stone rubble applied to the concrete in the top left corner of the photo give a very different feeling to this modernist villa in comparison to the all white plaster style of European Modernism. Even the iron grill features the heart shaped leaf of the Bhodi tree. The Bhodi tree, (which is related to the Ficus) is a sacred tree in the Buddhist religion. It was under the Bhodi tree that Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, attained enlightenment.
The Pieris house was designed around a central courtyard called a midula, which is typical of traditional Sri Lankan design. This was an interior place to gather, socialize, or sunbathe but also provided air flow to the rest of the house, most importantly to the second floor. The modernist influence is clear in the reinforced concrete columns and free-flowing spaces. All the rooms around this space had sliding glass doors so that interiors and exteriors flowed into one another in a manner similar to many of the classic California residences of later modernism. The concrete flat slab construction was the first in Sri Lanka and designed by Geoffrey Wood of Ove Arup partners.
This photo of a very modern stairwell in the De Saram house shows more regional motifs in the lotus blossom detail of the tile and the perforated wall. The beautifully crafted lacquered hand rail is another element of traditional Sri Lankan craftsmanship.
From the late forties to the early sixties, Minnette Da Silva was extremely busy designing single and multi-family homes.The Senanyake Flats in Colombo is the most prestigious of this period and also one of the few buildings by De Silva that still exists. This building's modernist roots are clear in its white plaster facade and its triangular support columns. But the deep exterior loggia wrapping around the building from which rattan blinds hang, shading the interior and creating a breezeway is definitely Sri Lankan. By 1970, Minnette had competition from Geoffrey Bawa, a modernist architect often credited as the founder of "Tropical Modernism" although he didn't begin practicing architecture or living in Sri Lanka until 1957. It was also around this time that her studio assistant, Danish architect Ulrik Plesner went to work for Geoffrey Bawa.
Community Based Architecture
The Watapuluwa Housing Scheme was another important public commission in1958.
Unlike her modernist contemporaries, Minnette was very focused on listening to the prospective tenants and involving them as much as possible in the design process, rather than designing for them. She was one of the first people to practice this form of participatory design, which is now seen as the standard for large public projects. She also created differing housing typologies to accommodate different income levels. A rent to own finance system allowed the existing locals to share in the increased land values as the neighborhood became more gentrified rather than the locals being forced out as land values increased. Most impressive of all were the friendships that developed between the diverse group of Hindu,Tamil, and Buddhist occupants, despite the conflicts arising between these groups elsewhere.
Kandy Arts Center
Her last major commission was the Kandy Arts Center in 1984 which combined an existing building and new addition into a multi-use performing arts space. By this time she had been living out of the country for many years, having left in the seventies to live in Europe, due to the civil unrest in Sri Lanka. Similarly to Eileen Gray and many other women who were forced to shutter their studios during WWII, when she returned and re-opened her studio she met with little success. However she did receive this important commission. Sadly this particular project was plagued by construction problems and although it is still in use today it differs greatly from the original design.
Legacy
In 1996 at the age of seventy eight, Minnette De Silva was awarded the gold medal by the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects. To accept this honor she wore one of the saris that she had designed at the beginning of her career with the Dumbara weavers.2 While a great honor, it was only two years before her death and fourteen years after her male colleague Geoffrey Bawa received this honor. In the last years of her life she began documenting her life and career in her autobiography, "The Life and Work of a Female Asian Architect." This autobiography, which she died before finishing, is one of the only sources of documentation of many of her buildings which have been demolished or abandoned to ruin. Sadly it is out of print and almost impossible to find, even in libraries. While there is currently a resurgence in interest in her work, how she is written about varies greatly. In some writing she is still characterized as difficult to work with or lacking in "technical knowledge" without specific examples of either technical issues or temperamental ones. Worse still, a recent book published in 2019 imagines a fictional love affair between the twenty-nine year old Minnette and the sixty year old Le Corbusier. Eww. I have yet to read about a modernist architect, male or female who was not exacting and difficult to work with and the refrain of a female architect lacking "technical knowledge" is certainly a familiar one. The recent book about Minnette De Silva written by Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi does a great job of helping us to better understand the indigenous cultures which influenced her work but the book is so small and the pictures of the work are difficult to see. Let's hope that the new found interest in the work of Minnette de Silva leads to a re-issue of her autobiography and the publishing of a more substantial examination and catalogue of her work.
Thirsty For More? Get the recipe for Minnette's Mai Tai here Notes
1.Minnette De Silva, The Life and Work of an Asian Woman Architect (Colombo: Smart Media Productions, 1998), p. 59.
2. Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Minette de Silva: Intersections Mack 2024 p.88
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