As a country which was pressurized by 30 years of civil war, ethnic conflict is one of the critical issue we face as a nation. Easter attack is the most recent incident which made impact on general public toward the ethnic conflict. And it is needs to be addresses from bottom up.
If the process of reconciliation starts with youth, it would be a stable foundation for the future of the country. Thus need of educating the young generation and giving them an inner understand about racism is very much important
With this issue project formulate to create awareness and inner understand trough landscape on philosophy of unity and ethnic conflict. In that point there is need of very special landscape. In the study process, Mawanella, Uthuwan kannda got selected as stabile city due to its multicultural context, history and location.
Other than all of these, in Mawanela history before 150 years ago there was young man call Saradiyel knowing as robin hood of Ceylon who was a freedom fighter. There was clear evidence in the literature and folk story about his philosophy of unity.
After selecting Mawanalla, Uthuwan kannda/Saradiyel’s Rock and Sardiyal, theoretical background for the project is picked by the book of ‘’temple in the house’’, by Antony lorla, according to that book, Formation of responsive architecture derives from the fundamentals of human-perception of space, defined as “pattern of thinking”. This consists of three aspects: desire, search and find, which generates or motivates every thought and governs the process till its completion.
Pattern of thinking consider as main attribute to the design. The journey thus consists of three stages: gate, path and lotus seat. The design focusses on celebrating the philosophy of national unity, through an understanding of the local hero Saradiyel’s pyeloscopy of unity. It generates the sense of awareness in two levels; one is stimulated by the senses and the other by intellect. The sensory experience begins at the Metamorphosis and continue through Curved passage, the lookout, Saradiyel’s shade , Focal corridor to the climax space, Temple of all faith and continue through Beacon, Exhilaration to Final memoire.
In this design, creates common stage to impose the sense in to inner minds of people to seek the proper knowledge on ethnic conflict, about the need of getting united, by using spiritual bond of the humans with nature and the philosophy of national hero saradiyal.
SPIRITUAL JOURNEY OF RECONCILIATION
7°15’41.7″N 80°25’08.9″E
Student: Nishan Gunathilaka
Final year Academic at Faculty of Architecture, University of Moratuwa , Sri Lanka
Image and Text Credit: Nishan Gunathilaka
