Morphology of the Evolving Courtyard with Special Reference to Light House Hotel In Galle

Abstract

With the rapid urban development and globalization, the vernacular architectural style of Sri Lanka has been affected by arbitrary and westernized style. Due to these influences the traditional architecture was declined with direct imitation of European architecture models. This caused the disappearance of regional cultural elements such as, courtyards. Vernacular form of courtyard was an expression of the climate of the region and national spatial model of the country. With global climatic issues, the built environment is intended to find more innovations on sustainable architecture. With this, once again, modern architecture paid its attention towards courtyards. As courtyards create a link to history and culture of the country the usage of it in modern architecture is found abundantly. Traditional courtyard was a central open space bounded with four built forms around. This central space was used for the spatial organization and to strengthen the building penetration of indoor and outdoor atmosphere. The courtyards were used for many cultural and social activities throughout the past. Modern adaptation of traditional courtyard is an old topic, which was discussed through many studies. But most of them were based on the value of courtyard usage and theories proving it. The issue here is that the use of practical application methods that have not been summarized. And there aren’t many studies on modern courtyard applications and about the morphology of the evolving courtyard. The goal of this paper is to study the application of traditional courtyard space in modern architecture through a case study on the Light House Hotel in Galle, by Architect Geoffrey Bawa. The paper is divided into three sections. Section one describes the origin and evolution of courtyards in history section two defines and describes the usage of courtyards I modernity, and finally conclude the paper with the case study on Light house hotel Galle.