Geoffrey Bawa’s Bengaluru moment Premium

Design in the Moment | Artist Aparna Rao and architect Channa Daswatte on crafting a bridge across time, through re-editions of the Tropical Modernist’s furniture

Architect Geoffrey Bawa is one of Asia’s strongest luminaries — with his nod to modernism, distinctive approach to create spaces suffused with light, and use of indigenous materials. His legacy is also the story of Sri Lanka.

For a nation that has continually braved political and economic crises, responses to solving a problem had to be immediate. During a time of economic restrictions, Bawa created furniture for his spaces that were, like his architecture, drawn from his environment and inspired by the times. He worked with local metalworkers, woodworkers and even fibreglass boat builders, and incorporated handmade fabrics — often deviating from the formal practice of making furniture.

Now in a new exhibition, Phantom Hands has launched a collection of furniture and other material drawn from the architect’s original designs. The Bengaluru-based modern furniture outfit, which began as an online store for vintage furniture, today showcases its creations in design galleries and furniture showrooms across the world. Exhibited at The Bawa Space in Colombo, this is the first time a furniture studio is presenting renditions; it’s also unique because an artist explored the histories within his oeuvre, to consider how they can be meaningful to contemporary times and needs.

Aparna Rao of Phantom Hands met Sri Lankan architect Channa Daswatte serendipitously in 2022, in Zurich. “Two weeks after my friend Jay Mehta introduced us, Aparna came to Sri Lanka and was enamoured by the story [of Bawa] and his designs,” says Daswatte, who had worked closely with Bawa and is now chairperson at the Geoffrey Bawa Trust. “We started off thinking we would do six sculptural pieces that had been shown at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum [in Germany] in 2004.” But the prototyping that followed left Rao unhappy.

“I found it difficult to relate to the pieces as they seemed to play a small part in his strong, iconic architectural spaces,” she recalls. So, she went back to Sri Lanka in 2023, and things shifted. “When I saw more original pieces at the Kandalama hotel, I began to realise how many different ideas, and even worlds, Bawa had managed to meld together in a harmonious way. I was intrigued by the plurality at the heart of his practice, something that had eluded me from afar.”

The exhibition, titled Design in the Moment, features 22 re-editions, prototypes and material samples from the architect’s practice — all hand-built in Bengaluru.

Edited excerpts from an interview with the curators: