Valentine Gunasekara

Valentine Gunasekara (born 31 January 1931) is a Sri Lankan architect considered to be one of the most influential for architecture during Sri Lanka's post-independent period.

He studied in London and became a modernist architect.^[1]

There is a book about him.^[2]

Personal life

Gunasekara was born to an elite Catholic family in colonial Ceylon. His father, Danny Gunasekara was a landed proprietor who had lost his wealth in the Great Depression of the 1920s. He died when Valentine was 2½ years old, and Valentine's mother had to raise a family of eight children on her own.

Gunasekara was educated at the Royal College, Colombo , which was essentially a school modelled on a Victorian grammar school. It was predominantly attended by the children of the rich and privileged of Ceylonese society of the time.

Gunasekara married Ranee Jayamanne in 1962, and they had eight children.

Post-independent period architectural profession in Sri Lanka

The 20th century saw a mass re-organization of 'worldwide system of States and Empires' following two World wars, creating new world powers. With this influence, the British Empire crumbled and new organisations such as the Commonwealth and United Nations were formed. This in fact was a new Euro-US domination that was later to alter the global-trend, that coloniser nations had attempted earlier. Following Ceylon's political independence that finally made it a nation-state, the Eurocentric local elite-class who took over the power, stuck to the same British-model of politics, administration and economics. As no significant differences were felt in lifestyles, elite-domestic architectural scene too remained rather constant enabling the style of 'Post Colonial' to prevail. According to some scholarly studies, Post Colonial consisted of various styles ranging from semi-classical; colonial and stately used style, pseudo-architectural style; commonly used for large-scale public projects and especially the Neo-Sinhala style; illustrating elitism of the Walauw-class.

The 20th century also saw a political re-orientation towards socialist views which appealed very much to newly independent nations such as Ceylon. With such a revolutionary backdrop, political leadership of the nation changed hands into a new regime of patriotic-elite in 1956, with political ideologies of nationalism backed by socialism and especially, non-alignment as a way of opposing colonial-legacy. The elite by this time had realised that they had to ride this new tide of 'nationalism' to be at the forefront of society.

Architectural Modernism which came into being in the late 19th century, by this time had reinterpreted itself as 'International Style' around the globe. It had no continuity with architectural history whatsoever and avoided decoration, placing emphasis on space and plan rather than mass. The ideas of Modernism were also in accordance with the socialist-inspired desires of most post-colonial leaders, whose objective was to use the post-colonial state as an instrument of change in building a modern-nation. It was this environment that made modernism comfortable for non-European architects who were handed-over the task of coming up with new architectural identities. Furthermore, the only form of reference in the modernist discourse to a particular place was found in the idea of tropical architecture. This assumed that there are two major climatic regions of the world that are temperate and tropical. These ideas reinstated that architectural modernism did not recognise any social or cultural differences amongst people, apart from merely a climatic difference.

For the post-independence Ceylonese architects seeking a new architectural identity for the nation as an attempt to break away from the British architectural legacy, the modernist architecture provided the perfect "neutral" terrain.

Just as architecture itself, architectural education in the former colonial nations during the time reflected similar views. The post-imperial Commonwealth further facilitated this trend by providing opportunities for post-colonial subjects to travel to other dominions to study architecture. Tropical modernism which found common practice during the immediate post-independence period was the result of this European attempt to further govern the built environment of their former colonies. It has to be noted that the prospective architects who made these trips essentially had to come from elite family-backgrounds. On their return, they were mainly employed by the contemporary elite who were riding the tide of nationalism, and their domestic buildings had become the best way to show-off their newly assumed commitment to the society.

Setting out

Valentine began his elaborative architectural career as a partner in 1959 alongside the renowned Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa in Edward, Reid and Begg (ER&B), following the completion of his studies at Architectural Association (AA) school in London. He had further participated in the course on tropical modernism run by Maxwell Fry at AA Tropical School.

In 1965 he won a Rockefeller grant and spent the whole of the following year touring the United States and personally meeting famous American architects such as Louis Kahn, Kevin Roche, Charles Eames, Richard Neutra, Paul Rudolph and Phillip Johnson. He further had the rare opportunity to work with Kevin Roche, and this could be seen as one of the decisive turning points of his design ideology.

Despite the great design freedom he enjoyed at the ER&B, his subconscious and conscious vengeance, towards existing and developing architectural patterns at the time, led to his obsession of discovering a unique architectural style of his own for a more just society. Being an ardent Catholic, he was very much committed to his religious philosophies that extended into his architecture that was based on communality, purity, serenity, as well as accuracy.

The rubric of Modernism that was largely prolific in Europe and the Americas in the form of so-called International style, also found its use in the post- colonial Ceylon that had undergone a radical political transformation, with the intervention of a number of new-generation of architects educated in the West. Architect Valentine Gunasekara could be stated as the boldest expressionist modernist the country's architectural profession has ever encountered.

Own practice

Owing to his conflicts with Geoffrey Bawa at ER&B, he withdrew from the practice in 1969 with eight others and commenced to set out on his own.

Christopher de Saram joined his practice from 1969 to 1974 and remained a conspicuous figure; a friend and associate of Valentine before he left in 1974 to join University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, to teach social studies. During this time, they collaborated in an array of interesting projects; the most notable being Tangalle Bay Beach Hotel in Tangalle, Southern Sri Lanka. Jayati Weerakoon became his most reliable structural engineer, and the two worked together in numerous interesting and complex projects. This partnership spanned throughout his entire carrier. Valentine Gunasekara also had the habit of employing a very few contractors to carryout his projects and M. C. Costa was the most notable.

With such a close-knit and nonhierarchical team, and commissions which mainly came from his Catholic connections, the practice ran for a substantial period. He deployed the novel methods of designing that he had picked up, from his working stint in the States, such as design development through models (etc.) quite effectively. Furthermore, he is said to be determined to design his projects affluently before going to tender. However, some postulate that he had the constant habit of changing his designs during the process of construction, adding to the frustration of clients and engineers.

Expressionist Modernism: an alternative to a new Sri Lankan Identity

Following independence, the necessity to discover an architectural rubric that would suit the country exhilarated, and was addressed by the means of using indigenous materials, traditions as well as technology. This exercise gave emphasis to keep up with in-built special qualities of old buildings such as walauwas, temples, monasteries and colonial buildings through redeployment of some of their architectural components. Architectural features such as ancient columns and fenestration were reused along with constituents of form such as interior courtyards, colonnaded passages, transitional verandahs and overhanging clay tile roofs.

In a more opposite extreme and abiding by his Modernist ideologies, Valentine disliked most traditional design concepts relating to the basic constituents of form. Downward or overhanging roof slopes of traditional verandah spaces was the most problematic as well as disturbing for him and wanted these roofs and ceilings to open out to allow the beauty of the surrounding in the form of trees, shrubs, their flowers and more of the sky to be captured further more to the interiors. His discretion of the traditional roof form was caused due to his thinking that the downward sloping roof obstructs the "inside-outside relationship" and acts as "a pause in Sri Lankan architectural space". The "feeling of introspect" was something to get rid of according to his novel way of thinking. Valentine considered that the spatial progression of a building at the boundary, where inside meets outside, is something that has to be more fluid, and this was achieved by raising the canopy or the roof edge up to ensure the outward draw. The more sculpturous forms seen in modern-movement examples of the day strongly appealed to him to be a great attraction.

Anusha Rajapaksha also categorises the evolution of Valentine's architectural concepts into three chronological phases, where his philosophy, concepts and forms saw a transformation that was rather radical. He was in constant quest for new spatial concepts that could be created with the innovative technology and material of the time such as glass and reinforced concrete. His diverse portfolio consists of a number of domestic buildings of the Modernist discourse. These were done mainly for the new elite-class of the country and they bear witness to the gradual path to his sculpturous and expressionist or in other words, rather raw forms of Modernism achieved during the last phase, having commenced from more tolerable counterparts of the first two phases.

Working abroad and emigration

Valentine Gunasekara had a brief spell working in Nigeria, in the early 1980s, and worked on a number of prominent government projects there.

During the course of his architectural carrier in Ceylon, he migrated twice to the United States; for the first time in 1974 (and returning in 1976) and for the last time in 1987 for good. He had to resort to becoming teacher in Wentworth College, a small private school in Boston, to support his family. He later moved away and retired (in 2002) in California.

An unfair comparison

The architecture of Valentine Gunasekara is often compared with Geoffrey Bawa, as the latter is conceived as the antithesis of the former. A notion prevails in the Sri Lankan architectural academia that Valentine's architectural carrier is not as affluent as Bawa's, the very reason that prompted him to retire while his counterpart, in comparison, received worldwide acclaim.

Sri Lanka is a nation with an array of primordial traditions instigated by an immutable Sinhalese-Buddhist cultural base, which had been time-tested throughout various quantum leaps that occurred in globalisation history of the world. The building traditions springing from this unique culture- in grand and folk design traditional forms- have been appropriately re-invented from time to time throughout history, allowing new rubrics with their distinct identities to spawn. In these rubrics, the presence of Sinhalese grand design tradition and vernacular has always been affluent. Hence, judging by the immense public acceptance and thus, success of the hybrid rubric devised by Geoffrey Bawa (that synthesised with indigenous traditions, as against the alienation by Valentine Gunasekara sprung up through the attempted relegation of the local with a frivolous foreign antithesis), the ever-prevailing immutability of the local building traditions and thus, the dominant indigenous elite sub-culture falling within the dominant ethnic culture of the country becomes explicit.

On the other hand, "Art for Art's sake" never seemed to have worked in Sri Lanka, albeit being aimed at the betterment of the society; art is ultimately political. Finally, it could be avowed that, the Sri Lankan elites of influence, did not embrace a rubric based on vernacular tradition due to their genuine belief of it as the one that best represents the country's identity; within the process of fulfilling their social responsibility as elites. The surviving feudal elites were rather obsessed with creating a picturesque and nostalgic niche of their own, through a rubric that best epitomised the defunct design traditions from medieval and colonial periods of Ceylon, from their past heyday. It also appealed to the elites who were progeny of the country's latter social mobility, as it was conceived as the ideal means of artificially aligning them with their old counterparts to gain public legitimacy. Hence, neither the vernacular nor tradition was used to their paramount potential, to form the best possible identity for the country's elite domestic architecture. Just because a certain architectural rubric as Valentine's threatens posterity of the elite system, it would never succeed without the familiar traditional vernacular archaic.

However, in terms of genuineness in approach, Gunasekara is unrivalled by Bawa.

Legacy

Despite the fact that he designed homes, churches, schools, commercial buildings and hotels, his projects have gone largely unpublished, and unrecognised until Anoma Peiris, an Australia-based Sri Lankan scholar published a book on his architecture titled "Imagining Modernity: The Architecture of Valentine Gunasekara", in 2007.

Apart from this, only a handful of attempts have been made to credit him for his affluent portfolio of work.

References