Tropical Modernism by Geoffrey Bawa
Architecture The architect who formalized Balinese style was Sri Lankan. His name was Geoffrey Bawa. Geoffrey Bawa was a Sri Lankan architect. In the 1960s, he developed what would later be called Tropical Modernism — a design approach that took local building tradition seriously, then gave it modernist form. He was, by most accounts, the best architect in Asia at the time. In 1971, Australian painter Donald Friend visited Bawa’s estate in Sri Lanka. He saw his recent works. He was convinced. He invited Bawa to Bali — to design a resort of private villas on his beachfront property in Sanur. Bawa arrived in 1973. The first buildings Donald showed him weren’t hotels. They were the courtyards and water palaces of Klungkung — East Bali’s royal architecture, built across centuries. That became his reference point. The first move: compound logic. Not a hotel as one structure. A collection of pavilions, each with its own roof and function — sleeping, dining, bathing — organized ar...