Reflections
Interviews conducted by Farah Casather
Raja Segar is an artist who found his passion in art by chance and takes immense pride and pleasure in his work. A sudden encounter in the early 1980s through his art exhibition, over a painting that expressed his core feelings, brings us to one of Minnette de Silva’s forgotten creations in the suburbs of Ja-Ela, off the west coast of Sri Lanka. The now 50-year-old structure still keeps minette’s original vision intact, and Segar speaks of his encounter and experiences with Minette, how her influence affected him in the long term and still to this day fuels his enthusiasm. Segar’s son Donovan also shares his experience in snippets and his experience of residing there for most of his life. Segar had taken liberties to manipulate the house in areas he deemed fit, but keeping Minette’s vision largely intact, and explains the pros and cons of her creation to his life as an artist.
Sumudu Athukorala had recently taken an opportunity to research a housing scheme developed by Archt Minnette De Silva in the late 1950s in Watapuluwa, which took an unconventional route to designing social housing, a participatory approach. Through his work experience as a researcher, he speaks of meeting people that reside to this day, some who participated in building and his personal accounts of Minnette’s legacy that remains to this day.
Sumudhu’s account details of an undermined architect, but the essence of her design prowess still intact, as generations of families residing chose to keep the houses largely intact with minimal changes to its structure. She is largely forgotten as the designer and the brainchild of the scheme, although some who still survived through the years remember the woman who visited them in colorful sarees.