ARTICLE
Minnette de Silva
Residential projects
One of de Silva’s first projects, the Karunaratne House in Kandy (1951) features a complex interlocking arrangement of interior spaces suitable for both intimate family life and large gatherings. The house was furnished with hangings of locally crafted Dumbara mats, and featured a mural by Sri Lankan Modernist painter George Keyt — which de Silva paid for personally when the clients refused to. The Pieris House I (1952) in Colombo is considered an archetypal Tropical Modernist home, featuring many of de Silva’s signature design principles — pilotis stilts raising the house off the ground, the use of local materials such as laterite stone, and a central courtyard. The various private housing projects de Silva undertook between the 1950s and 1960s exhibited her ability to work with various techniques and materials ranging from bare, unclad brick, stone, wood and rammed earth — as in the compact, low-cost Fernando House (1954) at Colombo — to modern roofing systems like the concrete shell of the Nadesan Villa (1961) in Kandy.
In addition to standalone houses, de Silva designed the Senanayake Flats (1957) in Colombo, four blocks of three-storeyed apartments that constituted a novel approach to apartment design in Sri Lanka at the time, with their curving facades, large balconies, and courtyards creating permeability between indoor and outdoor spaces in a Modernist idiom. During this period de Silva also undertook design for the ambitious Watapuluwa Housing Scheme (1958) in Kandy, which aimed to create 250 houses for civil servants. De Silva took a participatory approach to the project, unprecedented at the time, determining prospective residents’ needs through questionnaires and individual consultations. Based on these she designed the masterplan, communal facilities, and a number of prototype houses and variations, catering to different economic segments and requirements, including topographic variations in the sites. Though many of the houses eventually deviated from her original designs, the project was an important model for multicultural cohabitation in Sri Lanka, with residents from diverse communities.
Institutional and commercial projects
De Silva designed three hotels in the late 1950s, two featuring chalets on stilts with cadjan (coconut thatch) roofs. One of de Silva’s most ambitious projects was the Kandy Arts Centre, commissioned in 1982, which included a performance space, galleries and studios. Her initial design for the centre was altered many times during its construction due to changing requirements, such as the enlargement of the performance area, in some cases compromising its structural integrity and key design features such as the allowance of ample natural lighting into the theatre. Elements of her original vision that were retained include the courtyards, the torana or pillared gateway at the Centre’s entrance and the traditional tiled pitched roofs over the pavilions.
Publications, retrospectives and awards
Despite her pioneering contributions to Sri Lankan architecture, de Silva remained largely unrecognised during her lifetime — particularly in her home country — and a majority of her built projects were later demolished, extensively modified, or allowed to become derelict. In 1996, de Silva became the first woman to be awarded the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects’s Gold Medal. She published the first volume of her autobiography The Life and Work of an Asian Woman Architect (1998) a few weeks before her death. In 2024, the exhibition 88 Acres: The Watapuluwa Housing Scheme by Minette de Silva, was held at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Colombo — the first exhibition in the country centred on an individual architectural project.
De Silva passed away in Kandy in 1998 at the age of 80.
Bibliography
Bhoot, Mrinmayee. “An Exhibition at MMCA, Sri Lanka Explores Modernist Architect Minette de Silva’s Legacy.” STIRworld, February 13, 2024. Accessed November 20, 2024. https://www.stirworld.com/see-features-an-exhibition-at-mmca-sri-lanka-explores-modernist-architect-minette-de-silvas-legacy.
Corry, Amie. “Minnette De Silva.” Gagosian Quarterly, Fall 2022. Accessed March 13, 2025. https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2022/08/12/essay-minnette-de-silva/.
Dissanayake, Ellen. “Minnette De Silva: Pioneer of Modern Architecture in Sri Lanka.” Orientations 13, no. 8 (August 1982): 40–51.
Laharia, Utkarsha. “Minnette de Silva: The Story of an ‘Asian Woman Architect’.” Architectural Record, March 24, 2021. Accessed November 20, 2024. https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/15041-minnette-de-silva-the-story-of-an-asian-woman-architect.
Nunes, Inês Leonor. “Women Architects Disrupting Tropical Modernism.” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 34, no. 2 (Spring 2023): 7–22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/27224704.
Pinto, Shiromi. “Minnette de Silva (1918–1998).” The Architectural Review, August 7, 2019. Accessed November 19, 2024. https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/minnette-de-silva-1918-1998.
Robson, David. “Andrew Boyd and Minnette de Silva: Two Pioneers of Modernism in Ceylon.” thinkMatter, March 4, 2015. Accessed November 20, 2024. https://thinkmatter.in/2015/03/04/andrew-boyd-and-minnette-de-silva-two-pioneers-of-modernism-in-ceylon/.
Singha, Sumita. “Remembering Minnette de Silva: The Architect in a Sari.” The Royal Institute of British Architects. Accessed November 19, 2024. https://www.architecture.com/about/equality-diversity-and-inclusion/remembering-minnette-de-silva.
World Monuments Fund. “Minnette de Silva Project.” Accessed November 21, 2024. https://www.wmf.org/project/minnette-de-silva-project.