Lunuganga, Geoffrey Bawa’s Country Estate Lunuganga [(Sinhala: ලුණුගඟ, බෙන්තොට (the Salt river)] is a landscape garden and former home of the internationally renowned Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa. It has been built on a promontory that projects into the Dedduwa Lake situated in Bentota in Galle District, Sri Lanka. Geoffrey Bawa (1919-2003) was the son of Benjamin Bawa (1865-1923), a rich Colombo lawyer. He was also the brother of renowned architect Bevis Bawa (1909-1992). History Lunuganga, during the Dutch period, was a cinnamon garden and later a rubber plantation under the British (Robson, 1993). In 1949, soon after Sri Lanka gained its independence, Bawa bought it from its owner with the intention of converting the ramshackle bungalow on its centre into a weekend house and creating a tropical version of a European renaissance garden around it (Jones, 2011; Robson, 1993). He started his ambitious project but realised that his knowledge was no match for his imagination and therefore went to Britain to study Architectur…
