{"id":388,"date":"2023-03-17T13:37:20","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T12:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uni-weimar.de\/projekte\/projectminnettedesilva\/?page_id=388"},"modified":"2023-03-24T12:14:20","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T11:14:20","slug":"intro","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.uni-weimar.de\/projekte\/projectminnettedesilva\/intro\/","title":{"rendered":"Intro"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Peripheral sites of the modern colonial project, particularly where female practitioners and their building practices co-evolved, like the practice sites of Sri Lankan architect Minnette De Silva, have much to offer recent discussions on rethinking and transforming architectural education.<\/span><\/p>

Minnette De Silva studied architecture briefly in Bombay, worked for German \u00e9migr\u00e9 architect architect Otto Koenigsberger in India, and studied at the Architectural Association between 1945-1948. Subsequently, she established her own regional practice in Kandy (in what was then Ceylon) and became the first Asian woman to be an associate of the RIBA in 1948. 1947, the starting point of her practice, was a time of transition, not only for her own career, but for Sri Lanka itself, which would gain independence the following year. De Silva\u2019s struggle to develop a modern regional architecture emerged on the one hand from within the colonial periphery and indicate multiple forms of resistance to the colonial project. Yet, in other ways, her ability to question Sri Lanka\u2019s problematic relationships to coloniality was influenced by forms of knowing and doing she had acquired from the modern West through the social networks and cultural institutions she inhabited. As such, these struggles are significant not only because of the intentions and directionalities architects presumed to work towards but also in how these agendas were mediated within their practice sites, such as building, teaching, and writing.<\/span><\/p>

Practice sites such as those of De Silva’s are sites of knowledge transfer that produce a richer conception of \u201cnarratives\u201d, “difference” and \u201ctensions” in relation to modernity and colonialism, which are other <\/em>to the ways these concepts are usually theorised by means of binary categories such as nature and culture, modernity and tradition, Global North and South, developed and underdeveloped, male and female. De Silva\u2019s work leaves behind numerous sites of tension, ranging from her scrapbook-style autobiography, to the traces of her undemolished projects in Kandy and Colombo, and the remnants of material from her practice that are yet to find an institutional archive. In other words, the tensions mentioned above relate to how her project is part of a complex past (historicity) and measures taken to understand and engage De Silva\u2019s projects in history (historiography).<\/span><\/p>

There is an increasing interest in architectural education to engage the entangled, intersectional narratives surrounding the histories of buildings in ways that can permit a confrontation with problematic issues of power and perspective. What might it be like to reframe our engagement with De Silva\u2019s practice through the tensions that arise between historicity and historiography? For example, is it possible for a lecture or an essay\u2014both fundamental mediums for how architectural history and theory are taught\u2014to truly make learners aware of the complex ways that the colonial and modern projects have historically interacted? If a building (or design project) is an \u201cevent\u201d in time where many values and ultimately multiple narratives are negotiated, shouldn\u2019t engaging the complex past of these projects enable an understanding of how these negotiations played out? How may the possibilities of other <\/em>playful forms of interaction such as games, as well as digital technologies be used within this endeavour?<\/span><\/p>

This main part of the experimental project is a collaboration with learners at BSc and MSc levels in Germany and collaborators from Sri Lanka to collectively engage these broader questions, by looking more closely at how they played out in Minnette De Silva’s work. We do so by collectively developing experimental, interactive games that make use of playful storytelling and conversation. By creating the heuristics for history based, interactive storytelling systems, students are immersed directly in the questions of building practice history and historiography.\u00a0 At one level, developing the prototype as a learning exercise enabled students to critically engage these broader questions by developing an alternative rather than stopping at a mere critique. At another level, being publicly presented on this website means these prototypes can become a learning tool for others. <\/span><\/p>

The website also contains a few interviews that portray some impressions De Silva left behind among her clients and other users of her buildings and an interactive digital card game. The quizz was inspired by some of the points that came up in the project discussions.\u00a0 These points provided a framework for further research that was used to convert the ideas into illustrations. All these interactive systems can help the wider public to gain a better understanding of the relationships between the pasts of buildings, historicity, historiography, narratives and facts. Moreover, playing these games can enable the public, i.e., those with no formal training in architecture and design, to understand the complex cultural role that architecture and architectural practices play in the contemporary world. In other words, it is hoped that those of you who interact with these games\u2014and, thereby, with Minnette De Silva’s work\u2014will gain an appreciation of how the issues and questions raised about engaging her past extends far beyond the history of a single architect.<\/span><\/p>

Core project team: Dulmini Perera, Leonie Link, Florian Tudzierz, Nikolai Krome, Tom\u00e1s M\u00fcller, Catarina\u00a0 Todorovic Caldeira, Vincent Brian Mank, Andreea-Ioana Barbuceanu, Apoorva John, Mariana Meirelles Ribeiro, Catarina Lopes Santos. We would like to thank our collaborators Sumudhu Athukorala (digital card game illustrations), Christoph Preuss (digital card game), Himanshu Dutt (web design), Guido Campi (Spanish translations) and Farah\u00a0 Casather (interviews) for co-working with us to develop the project.<\/p>

We extend our gratitude to our two guest presenters this semester Prof.Madina Tlostonova and Prof. Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, for their inspirational presentations. We are also thankful for the conversations with colleagues in Sri Lanka, Germany and elsewhere that helped develop this work.<\/span><\/p>

This project was made possible through the generous funding support of \u00bbIdeenfonds Lehre 2022\/23\u00ab at the Bauhaus University Weimar.<\/strong><\/p>

Copyright statement: (CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0) As long as attribution is given to the authors or copyright holders, users are allowed to copy, distribute, and display or perform the material in public. You may not use the material on this website for commercial purposes.<\/em><\/p>

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