Abstract

The Centre for housing and environment; Learning through action (CHELTA) of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (SLIA) called for a competition in 1998 to design a master plan, detail one neighbourhood and to foresee the completion of the neighbourhood, when shanty dwellers residing along the banks of the canal in Colombo 6 had to be relocated to a new site in Mirihana, Nugegoda to allow for restoration of the canal. This competition was called for in a context of known failures to address the housing needs of the low and middle income. Experiments had moved through several directions known as ‘core houses’, ‘type plans’, ‘self help aided’, ‘maximal support and minimal intervention’, ending with the role of designers being contemplated as ‘enablers’; an interpretation of the Pattern Language of Christopher Alexander (1977).
The project had to be delivered within a very restricted budget being a charitable venture funded by the Rotary Club.
The primary objective of the competition was to ‘focus on the creation of a sustainable neighbourhood’ which were detailed as follows.
o The creation of a good and harmonious community may be contributed to substantially by a ‘well planned’ physical setting”.
o That such ‘planning’ should consist of, determining the ideal sociological mix for the community, identifying the psychological sociological profiles for individual families and designing individual house units to fit them, and defining the preferred patterns of community activity and to deploy public/ common spaces accordingly.
o That a good fit between user needs and built environment may best be obtained through maximising the intervention of the socially conscious architect who would also propose a financial strategy of rental and /or system of transferring ownership to the householder and propose a system of upkeep and maintenance for the neighbourhood.
o That the provision of any kind of housing and therefore of neighbourhoods should be looked at as an ongoing learning process, the strategy for which should therefore include a built in system for obtaining/ facilitating feedback information on the success or otherwise of the design and sociological assumptions that have been made.
Primali Paranagamage was the winner of this open competition conducted by the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects. This presentation contains snippets from the Design project report and images of the completed project.