Minnette De Silva: Intersections is a richly illustrated critical introduction to the practice of one of the twentieth century's most significant architects — a woman who founded her own professional practice in Sri Lanka in 1947, among the first in the world to do so.
About This Book
When Minnette De Silva established the Studio of Modern Architecture in Kandy in 1947, she was charting territory few women anywhere had entered. This book maps the intellectual intersections that defined her practice: modernist architectural technique meeting material heritage, lived experience shaping spatial thinking, and a career that moved between Sri Lanka, India, England, Greece, Hong Kong, and beyond. Archival drawings, photographs, and extracts from De Silva's own memoir anchor the critical analysis, making this both a scholarly primer and a visual record of a designer whose work collapsed the distance between contemporary architecture and heterogeneous cultural pasts. Essential reading for those engaged with postcolonial modernism and the history of women in architecture.
Key Features
- 96 pages of archival drawings, photographs, and critical text tracing De Silva's architecture and cultural practice
- Written by architectural historian Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi; researched with Methmini Kariyakarawana and others
- Extracts from De Silva's memoir, The Life and Work of an Asian Woman Architect, woven throughout
- Published by MACK
What You'll Discover
- How De Silva synthesised modernist architectural methods with Sri Lankan and broader Asian material heritage traditions to forge a distinctive aesthetic program
- The scope of a practice that extended beyond buildings into settlement planning, handicraft experimentation, curation, and writing
- The transnational intellectual network — spanning India, England, Greece, and Hong Kong — that informed her design thinking
- De Silva's conception of architecture as lived experience and as a contemporary expression of heterogeneous pasts, rather than a resolution of them
About the Author
Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi is an architectural historian whose research focuses on the intersections of architecture, history, and postcolonial cultural production. This book was researched with Methmini Kariyakarawana and others, drawing on archival materials connected to De Silva's life and practice.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 96
- Dimensions: [Details available upon request]
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781915743534
- Publisher: MACK
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and historians with an interest in postcolonial modernism, researchers in the history of women in architecture, and practitioners exploring the relationship between cultural heritage and contemporary design.