Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi
From Sri Lanka to the World: Minnette De Silva, Architecture, and History
Wednesday, January 24, 2018, 6:30pm
Room 934, Schermerhorn Hall
Columbia University
Few careers lay open the complexities of architectural entanglements with gender, labor, and the politics of cultural heritage in the twentieth century as does that of Minnette De Silva (1918-1998): R.I.B.A. Associate, Sri Lanka Institute of Architects Gold Medalist, C.I.A.M. participant, and co-founder of the journal MARG. She combined progressive and revivalist thrusts together, from her student work in the 1940s at the Sir J.J. College of Architecture and the Architectural Association to later studies of Asian architecture for MARG, Ekistics, and Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture. Her designs combined reinforced concrete technology and Surrealist composition techniques with Ceylonese arts and crafts and a gendered, village-based system of fabrication.
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