m̌ ḫ's photos
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Not Japan
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Paradise garden
Unknown fruit, hanging like a testicle
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m’ friend the tree
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Club villa
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No place reveals the soul of Geoffrey Bawa, the acclaimed Sri Lankan architect, better than his country home, Lunuganga. When Bawa purchased the site in 1948, it was nothing more than a derelict rubber estate sitting on a promontory in the Dedduwa Lake, 2km inland from the Bentota coast. But over the next fifty years, he painstakingly transformed it into one of the most seductive, passionate pleasure gardens of the twentieth century.
From the heart of the estate, turn to the south, and a wide swathe of green field, fringed by thickets, swells gently upwards to Cinnamon Hill. Beyond, the lake glimmers and draws the eye to the hills in the distance. Turn to the north, and a glorious azure sweep of water and sky swings into view. Here, the edge of the land falls away in a dramatic cliff to reveal a water garden filled with lilies and ornamental rice paddies. This is the complex, Arcadian magic of Lunuganga: a single turn transforms an enthralling, idyllic perspective into an ecstatic, unrestrained panorama. To wander through Lunuganga is to be confronted with a palimpsest of influences, ideas, and memories.
This is a boutique hotel
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Club Villa, located in the heart of Bentota, one of the most sought after destinations in Sri Lanka is known for its distinctive offerings. Designed by Geoffrey Bawa, a world-renowned name in creating simple yet elegant living styles, this property creates the ideal home-away from home stays. From the architecture design to the services, the team Club Villa only pursue to offer the best experience of warm hospitality that Sri Lankans are famed for.
www.clubvillabentota.com
Place of peace
Unusual garden
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Elements of Italian Renaissance gardens, English landscaping, Japanese garden art, & the water gardens of ancient Sri Lanka are all blended classical Greco-Roman statues pose insouciantly, and bacchanalian grotesque sculptures glare from tangles of undergrowth. Precise, orthogonal lines give way unexpectedly to baroque, serpentine contours. Engulfing everything is foliage of a deep, intoxicating green, broken occasionally by the hues and textures of wrought iron, stone, concrete, and clay. In the midst of Bawa’s personal, tropical Eden, all senses are heightened: to the views of the garden and the lake dappled by light and shade, to the sounds of birds and the rustling of leaves, and to the smell of the wet earth and grass after rain. Lunuganga is an experience of almost overwhelming aesthetic pleasure, and remains Bawa’s most extravagant creation and testament.
The entire estate has been preserved as Bawa left it at the moment of his death, and is now run as a country house boutique hotel offering an unparalleled opportunity to experience the architect’s vision as he intended: by inhabiting it.
Randomly placed
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No place reveals the soul of Geoffrey Bawa, the acclaimed Sri Lankan architect, better than his country home, Lunuganga. When Bawa purchased the site in 1948, it was nothing more than a derelict rubber estate sitting on a promontory in the Dedduwa Lake, 2km inland from the Bentota coast. But over the next fifty years, he painstakingly transformed it into one of the most seductive, passionate pleasure gardens of the twentieth century.
From the heart of the estate, turn to the south, and a wide swathe of green field, fringed by thickets, swells gently upwards to Cinnamon Hill. Beyond, the lake glimmers and draws the eye to the hills in the distance. Turn to the north, and a glorious azure sweep of water and sky swings into view. Here, the edge of the land falls away in a dramatic cliff to reveal a water garden filled with lilies and ornamental rice paddies. This is the complex, Arcadian magic of Lunuganga: a single turn transforms an enthralling, idyllic perspective into an ecstatic, unrestrained panorama. To wander through Lunuganga is to be confronted with a palimpsest of influences, ideas, and memories.
Boutique hotel
Heaven of an architecture, imagine you live here
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The Sri Lankan Architect Geoffrey Bawa is now regarded as having been one of the most important and influential Asian architects of the 20th century. Bawa came to architecture late, only qualifying at the age of thirty-eight in 1957, but he soon established himself as Sri Lanka’s most prolific and inventive architect, establishing a whole canon of prototypes for buildings in a post-independence context. His oeuvre includes hotels, houses, schools and universities, factories, offices, numerous public buildings as well as the new Sri Lankan Parliament.
Bawa’s work is characterized by sensitivity to site and context. His work is instinctively, rather than self-consciously, sustainable. His designs break the barriers between inside and outside, between buildings and landscape, and he characteristically links a complex series of spaces—rooms, courtyards, loggias, verandah—with distant vistas in a single scenographic composition.
One of Bawa’s most impressive achievements has been the Garden at Lunuganga, which he has slowly fashioned for himself from an abandoned rubber estate over a period of fifty years. The result is a series of outdoor rooms conceived with an exquisite sense of theatre as a civilized wilderness set within the greater garden of Sri Lanka. He died in 2003 and was cremated on the Cinnamon Hill of his magical garden. In 2001 Bawa received the special Chairman’s award in the eighth cycle of the Aga Khan award for architecture, becoming only the third architect to be so honored since the awards inception.
Open air bathroom
Indecent proposal
Garden magic gate
Rare black orchid
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Bat Orchid - This interesting breed of black flower bares a close resemblance to a bat in flight. It’s a deep shade of brown and to the untrained eye, looks ebony black. This specie is a member of the orchid family. It’s also often referred to as the ‘Devil Flower’ or the ‘Cat’s Whiskers’. Asides from its distinctive appearance, some scientists also believe this flower to have cancer-fighting properties.
Briefly from the garden
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Located only 20 minutes away from the Aluthgama town, the journey through paddy fields and the breeze that sweeps across the wilderness will certainly make you feel like a wayfarer.
briefgarden.com/location
Colours, shapes, nature
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