Minnette de Silva: the brilliant female architect forgotten by history.

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Against all odds, the 1940s pioneer of Sri Lankan modernism became one of the world’s most famous women architects. So why are her buildings not celebrated today?

Minnette de Silva and politician George de Silva at the 1948 World Congress of Intellectuals in Defence of Peace. Photograph: PAP
▼  The second house designed by Minnette de Silva, once one of the most famous female architects in the world, stands in Alfred House Gardens, a leafy street in Colombo, Sri Lanka, tucked away from the fumes of nearby Galle Road.
Raised on columns, the house shelters within a limestone boundary wall, its iron gate patterned with leaf shapes. A yellow oleander tree and red bougainvillea spill over the gate, almost entirely obscuring the house that was built for family friends the Pierises in 1952. Inside are De Silva’s trademark features: open courtyards and verandahs alive with trees, shrubs and a pond; a walled garden; a parking space that once doubled as a play area; and a staircase sweeping up to the second floor, where the bedrooms and kitchen are located.
“The bedrooms were one big room divided by teak cupboards,” recalls Prianga Pieris, son of the original owner. “Air flowed freely along the top. As children, we used to talk to each other over the walls.”
His sister, Malkanthi Perera, who lives next door, says: “She had a wonderful sense of using space usefully. Nothing was wasted.” As Perera speaks, the clamour of jackhammers scythes through the leafy canopy. Yet another luxury apartment tower is rearing up, this time behind her house. Colombo is changing at a rapid pace: the population is now a bout 6 million, and high-rise blocks are encroaching on the elegant villas of Alfred House Gardens. De Silva’s house is one of few that remain.

Minnette de Silva’s house for Ian Pieris in Colombo’s Alfred House Gardens. Photograph: LASWA
Meanwhile, the architect’s own studio and home in Kandyhave fallen into ruin – a sobering symbol of how the legacy of this once-famous architect has been neglected.
The daughter of a reformist politician and suffragette, and a close friend of the architectural giant Le Corbusier, Minnette de Silva was Sri Lanka’s first modernist architect and the first Asian woman to become an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
She pursued her vocation despite her father’s opposition, moving first to Mumbai and later postwar London to study. During her time at the Architectural Association (AA) in the UK she cut an elegant figure, draped in silk saris and followed by a train of young male students bearing her bags and instruments.

De Silva with Pablo Picasso, Jo Davidson and Mulk Raj Anand in 1948. Photograph: -
She exploited her difference – her exotic appearance and unique position at the AA – to launch herself into high society. Within no time, she became a 1940s “It girl”, rubbing shoulders not just with Le Corbusierbut also Henri Cartier-Bresson, Picasso and Laurence Olivier. She never married, confiding much later in life to a friend that husbands were only good for carrying one’s bags.
After Sri Lanka became independent in 1948, De Silva returned and set up a studio in her family home at St George’s – one of only two women in the world at the time to establish an architectural practice in her own name.
From there she began designing and building everything from cottages to villas to entire apartment blocks. Her trademark was to develop modernist architecture in harmony with the landscape and traditional craftsmanship. (▪ ▪ ▪)

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