2025: A Year in Review
The past twelve months marked a period of growth and transition for the Geoffrey Bawa and Lunuganga Trusts. The opening of the dedicated Bawa Space on Horton Place enabled the consolidation of the Trust’s work and expanded its public presence. Alongside extensive archival and conservation activity, the Trust continued its mission to further the fields of art, architecture, and ecology through dialogue and knowledge sharing across public programmes, academic collaborations, and professional partnerships.
The year opened with the Design in the Moment exhibition, followed by the ongoing Ways of Knowing exhibition, open through March 2026. Both exhibitions supported regular public programming, including monthly curatorial tours, workshops, lectures, children’s events, and other programming.
Exhibitions, Public Programmes, and Initiatives
On view at the Bawa Space through May 2025, Design in the Moment was a collaboration between Phantom Hands and the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, co-curated by Channa Daswatte and Aparna Rao, presenting a re-edited selection of furniture, lighting, and objects designed by Geoffrey Bawa’s practice in the latter half of the twentieth century. Public programming included monthly curatorial tours by Channa Daswatte, a talk by Phantom Hands co-founder Aparna Rao, and a furniture origami workshop led by Colombo-based artist Shazad Synon.
Following the exhibition, the Phantom Hands x Geoffrey Bawa Collection received international recognition at Salone del Mobile (Milan Design Week), and at AD Design shows in Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Exhibition: Design in the Moment
Ways of Knowing opened at the Bawa Space in July 2025. Using the Lunuganga garden as its lens, the exhibition examines how we know what we know through multi-sensory installations, bringing together virtual reality, film, textiles, seeds, maps, and oral traditions to encourage engagement through touch, sound, movement, and play. The exhibition features objects from the Geoffrey Bawa Collection alongside works by guest artists Clara Kraft Isono, Barbara Sansoni, and Ruvin de Silva.
Ways of Knowing is supported by monthly curatorial tours and a range of programmes engaging diverse audiences. Since opening, the exhibition has included a workshop by filmmaker and architect Clara Kraft Isono on optical technologies and spatial perception; a talk on how life forms such as mycelium can inform architectural thinking; a botanical knowledge walk through Viharamahadevi Park; a workshop on colour and memory by the Barefoot design team; and a poetry open mic night. This year also saw the introduction of a children’s strand, including a youth-oriented tour of the exhibition and a Saturday Story Club with books and hands-on craft activities.
Ways of Knowing is supported by a generous grant from the British Council as well as Kohler India, Initiating Partner for the Geoffrey Bawa Trust’s Exhibition Programme.
Exhibition: Ways of Knowing
Knowledge Sharing from Sri Lanka and Beyond
In 2025, the Trust hosted a series of lectures and conversations with leading voices in architecture and cultural practice, including a curatorial conversation with M+ Museum Director and Geoffrey Bawa Trustee Suhanya Raffel; a lecture by Professor Jin Qiuye on garden-like spatial qualities in architecture; the 22nd Annual Geoffrey Bawa Memorial Lecture and workshop by Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena on preservation and contemporary practice; and a Thai Architecture Programme, presented in collaboration with the Royal Thai Embassy, featuring Rachaporn Choochuey, Kulapat Yantrasast, and Dr Pirasri Povatong. The year concluded with Material and Memory, a talk by Pamudu Tennakoon reflecting on Colombo’s colonial architecture and material memory.
Since 2023, the Trust has convened an annually rotating Youth Advisory Board to support youth engagement across its programmes, with the 2025 cohort contributing to guided tours and public programming. The December Design Market continued to support Sri Lankan small and medium-sized enterprises, with vendors operating independently and retaining full proceeds, and this year also incorporated a cyclone donation drive in response to Cyclone Ditwah, with donations distributed through The T.E.A Project. The Trust also advanced its outreach initiatives through Bench It!, a student-led design competition inspired by Design in the Moment, with a selected design to be installed at the Bawa Space.
Ongoing Initiatives
In 2025, the Geoffrey Bawa Trust commenced a Paper Conservation Programme with conservator Udaya Hewawasam, focusing on the preservation of paper-based materials in the collection and archival records, alongside plans to establish a dedicated conservation lab. Conservation work was also completed on the Laki Senanayake mural at Lunuganga, with Ajith Jayasundara and his team undertaking structural repairs to the verandah walls and roof to protect the artwork. In parallel, the Trust’s archives were relocated and consolidated at the Bawa Space, where specialised storage has been developed for textiles, photographs, drawings, and paintings, and a comprehensive cataloguing and digitisation process is now underway.
Collections, Conservation, and Archives
Ecology, Research, and Networks
In 2025, the Hog Deer Project on Honduwa Island continued to expand in partnership with the Department of Wildlife Conservation, with the island now home to 32 hog deer. The Lunuganga Trust also signed an MoU with the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society of Sri Lanka to support ecological restoration, invasive species removal, and biodiversity protection, informed by research from the Universities of Peradeniya and Sri Jayewardenapura and supported by grants from the Lanka Environment Fund and Deutsche Bank. During the year, the Trust helped establish the Global Working Group on Tropical Gardens under the International National Trusts Organisation, connecting tropical gardens across Barbados, India, Malaysia, Maldives, Sri Lanka, St Helena, Thailand, and Zimbabwe. The Trust also launched the Intersectional Ecology Talk Series, hosting discussions on urban planning and wildlife management with Sriyan de Silva Wijeyeratne and on indigenous knowledge and regenerative ecology with Dr Thilanka Gunaratne, with the series continuing in 2026.
The Geoffrey Bawa Space and Bawa Design Stores
December marked one year since the Trust moved into the Bawa Space in Colombo 07, bringing together its curatorial and administrative offices, archives, library, design store, and public gallery. The expanded space has enabled increased public engagement through exhibitions and events, alongside ongoing efforts to improve accessibility.
In late 2025, the Trust launched Bawa Design Stores at the Bawa Space, Lunuganga, and Number 11, featuring Bawa-inspired products developed through ethical collaborations with Sri Lankan small and medium-sized enterprises. The opening of the Bawa Space store was marked by an embroidery workshop led by visual storyteller and illustrator Shenuka Corea.
A new chapter for our curatorial team
Thilini Perera
Aneesha Mustachi
Soham Kacker
Chief Curator Shayari de Silva will be stepping down from her role in 2026, following the opening of the exhibition Geoffrey Bawa: Architecture for the Senses which she is co-curating. The exhibition is by the Vitra Design Museum in Germany and M+ in Hong Kong in collaboration with the Geoffrey Bawa Trust. Shayari joined the Trust in 2018 as its first formal curatorial employee and steered the establishment of its year-round public programmes along with enabling the study and cataloguing of its archives and collections, setting up the curatorial department and team, and the move to the Geoffrey Bawa Space on Horton Place. Under her leadership, the Trust also joined CIMAM, ICAM (whose board Shayari sits on) and initiated Open House Colombo, which is part of the Open House Worldwide network. She curated and oversaw the delivery of two major long-duration, multi-event programmes – Bawa 100 and To Lunuganga – and the tour of our first exhibition on the Geoffrey Bawa archives which opened in Colombo in 2022, and went on travel to the NGMA in Delhi and Yale Architecture Gallery in New Haven. On this next chapter, she says “It has been an immense privilege to work with the Trust’s team and collections over the last eight years, and I’m proud to leave knowing that the Trust is in such a strong position with excellent leadership which will take our work further forward.”
The Trust welcomes Thilini Perera as the new Director for Curatorial Affairs. Thilini brings over five years of experience at the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, where she has led design and communications, alongside a career of more than 15 years in the field. Since joining the Trust in 2019, she has managed and delivered its visual identity, strategic communications, and a wide range of online and offline outputs, while contributing to major exhibitions and publications. She has also supported institutional development by strengthening organisational systems and has expanded the Trust’s curatorial scope through projects such as The Order of Nature, its first queer-focused installation within the To Lunuganga programme.
The Trust also appoints Aneesha Mustachi as Senior Curator. A trained architect, Aneesha has been with the Geoffrey Bawa Trust since 2021 and brings extensive curatorial and archival expertise to the role. She leads several key projects at the Trust, including curating A Light through Time, the Trust’s first exhibition at Number 11, and representing the Trust at the ICAM 22 sessions in Hong Kong. She is currently working on a forthcoming exhibition and publication on the Ena de Silva House, and supporting Geoffrey Bawa: Architecture for the Senses at the Vitra Design Museum.
In early 2025, the Trust appointed Soham Kacker to the newly established role of Curator of Living Collections. He joined the Trust following the completion of his Master’s in Biodiversity and Conservation at the University of Oxford, and brings extensive experience in horticulture, ecology, and landscape management, having worked in botanical gardens in India and the UK. Based at Lunuganga, he oversees the maintenance and restoration of the garden, and leads the Trust’s ecological and environmental programmes.