Abstract:
How should architects educate themselves in Sri Lanka today? Approaching this question from
the standpoint of cities, I will present in the form of theses the basic lessons to be drawn from
attempts made by modernist architects—in collaboration with avant-garde artists and thinkers—
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to change the world. These include critical reflections on not only the moment of modernism, but
also the epoch of postmodernism in the West. I argue that the experiences of both modernism
and postmodernism remaiixvital for postcolonial contexts as well—especially in situations such as
post-war Sri Lanka, where urban planning assumes a leading role in the drama called
development. To wit: whereas the mutation of modernism into modernization and the
subsequent abandonment of urban space to market forces known as postmodernism present us
with scenarios to be avoided at any cost, the combination of art, technology and politics alloyed
in the unfinished project of modernism in the early decades of the last century still raise key
questions for our architects and urbanists: how did our cities come to be what they are, what
kind of cities do we want, and how do we go from the cities we have to the cities we love?
