Minnette de Silva: Intersections - Softcover

Siddiqi, Anooradha Iyer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1915743532 ISBN 13: 9781915743534

Publisher: MACK, 2024

Synopsis

When Minnette De Silva founded the Studio of Modern Architecture in Kandy, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), in 1947, she was one of the first women in the world to establish a professional architectural practice as sole principal. Today, she is known for her designs and constructions of private residences and public institutions, settlement planning, experiments in building and handicraft, research, curation, and writing. Her practice treated architecture as a lived experience and a contemporary expression of heterogeneous pasts.

Minnette De Silva: Intersections offers a richly illustrated critical introduction to De Silva's practice, exploring a range of projects through the intersecting intellectual concerns that shaped her work. Archival materials, drawings, photographs, and extracts from De Silva's memoir, The Life and Work of an Asian Woman Architect, describe her diverse work in a career situated in Sri Lanka and informed by substantial engagements with India, England, Greece, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. Drawing on modernist architectural techniques and material heritage practices, De Silva forged a distinctive, critically engaged aesthetic program and set of values. This book by architectural historian Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, researched with Methmini Kariyakarawana and others, offers a primer to the thought and production of one of the twentieth century's most significant architects and cultural figures.

Edition details

• Publisher: MACK
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1915743532
• ISBN 13: 9781915743534
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96