The new age of ecologically empathetic design

• For Sri Lankans, design inspiration is easily sourced, as every remaining precolonial complex is an example of ecologically empathetic design. The only obstacle is our own mental conditioning; unfortunately, even after three quarters of a century of colonial absence, for the majority of Sri Lankans, Western design is their default style
• The Geoffrey Bawa Moonamal Award, represents a significant shift from its previous stream, of celebrating independent architects. This big and vital step, will recognise the contribution of multiple skills and knowledge to achieve ecological empathy

Since the dawn of civilisation, humans have been talking about developing a better future. Yet, in the memory of every human living today, the quality of life on this planet has been plummeting quite rapidly. The foreground for today’s global decline is an environmental crisis, birthed by our skewed definition of development. If anything is tagged ‘Development’ we blindly destroy the environment; confidently disrupt rivers, carve hillsides and obliterate entire ecosystems. Despite two centuries of practicing development designs intended to beat the environment into submission, we are yet to arrive at this ephemeral ‘better future’. 

Perhaps, if we borrow a design page from the past… and marry it to our sophisticated technology, we will find a hybrid solution for a ‘better future’. A new design ethos that humbly, acknowledges the tremendous power of Nature, is long overdue. Recognition of an ecologically empathetic approach to designing every type of built environment, and the policies that enforce them, is needed. Where better to seed this revised approach to built environments than, through the Trust of the doyen of Sri Lankan architecture, the late Geoffrey Bawa. The Geoffrey Bawa Moonamal Award hopes to inspire this alternate approach to design, from policy to buildings and infrastructure. 

For Sri Lankans, design inspiration is easily sourced, as every remaining precolonial complex is an example of ecologically empathetic design. The only obstacle is our own mental conditioning; unfortunately, even after three quarters of a century of colonial absence, for the majority of Sri Lankans, Western design is their default style. Few have looked back at the colossal design heritage of our island; Minette de Silva, in her early expression of tropical modernism, unravelled the magic of traditional building systems, employing elaborate ventilation, natural lighting and timber joinery. Bawa retrieved the courtyard and sighting precision, as a crucial tropical design feature and further developed his detail, by up-cycling discarded traditional building elements. Many designers have since been inspired, but few have gone beyond the build and applied the sophisticated land-use principals, which once governed our built environments.   

Ancient Sri Lanka’s elegant pavilions, rainwater-harvesting ponds and multiple courtyards were purposefully woven into the canvas of natural environments. Our ancients comprehended nature, beyond the superficial; forests were catchments, ground water was a feeder for cascading reservoirs, rock outcrops were soil stabilisers and prefab hard builds. Ponds were the monsoon’s sponges, urban heat islands were defeated by open paving, courtyards and wooded parklands, water flowed unimpeded beneath raised pavilions…. This is the language of design that we have lost. We also forgot that natural elements are most beneficial, if they are allowed to remain intact or even enhanced. 

In the centuries since we forgot how relevant the natural environment is, focusing on mere buildings instead, we have destroyed landscapes that are key to our survival. Today, the sum total of smaller ecological systems collapsed, by a failed definition of Development, has resulted in Climate Change. Now, planting a few trees or growing monocultures is futile. To move forward, we must restore entire ecosystems — this is rewilding. It is the only solution, if we hope to reap the multiple ecosystem services that natural habitats provide, such as, water storage, air purification, erosion management, soil replenishment, pollination…. Beyond restoration, we need to regenerate new ecosystems, for the lands forever lost to roads, cities, industry and extraction. Regeneration of ecosystems is simply, copy-pasting the primary species of geographically identical, pristine environments, in distressed lands. Unhindered, environments then rapidly restore and regenerate themselves.

The Geoffrey Bawa Moonamal Award, also represents a significant shift from its previous stream, of celebrating independent architects. This big and vital step, will recognise the contribution of multiple skills and knowledge to achieve ecological empathy. The Turkish Nobel laureate, Orhan Parmuk, in My Name is Red, writes of a philosophical conflict between painters of the Ottoman court where fundamentalists condemn the West’s emphasis on individual style. This is the discrepancy, which widened between Eastern and Western perspectives. Eventually, as Western civilisations over-ran older cultures, the celebration of individuals, the soloists who created monumental architecture, rather than deep design through a pooling of knowledge and skills, became the norm. 

Today, as we teeter on the brink of complete ecological collapse, it is finally accepted that enabling ecological harmony requires combining multiple disciplines. Nobody knew this better than Bawa himself, with his coterie of Ena de Silva, Laki Senanayake, Barbara Sansoni, Kandasamy Pulogasunderam et al, who worked in cohesion, to produce a single masterpiece. This is a return to the traditional practice of ateliers of thinkers, designers, technicians and specialised craftspeople. To positively impact our planet, this collaborative approach must encompass infrastructure and policy design too. To “design beyond ourselves” will be a test of ego and a relinquishing of the immense power of the individual designer. 

Who will succeed, will be the designers and developers who interpose rather than impose on landscapes. Advocates of the environment and team players, who read the land and accept that no single individual has the comprehensive knowledge and skills to successfully design and achieve ecological harmony. What is required by architects and developers today, is an understanding that we are now in the age of ecologically empathetic design. This will be the future of global design.

 

(The author’s  design projects include; Jetwing Vil Uyana, Jetwing Kaduruketha, Teardrop’s Camellia Hills etc. She was the first Chair of the Federation of Environmental Organisations, is a member of the Steering Committee of the Geoffrey Bawa Moonamal Award and the author of The Line of Lanka and Ravana’s Lanka. Now retired, she lives in her rewilded monsoon forest, in Central Sri Lanka)