On Construction Making, Methods & Materials: Curious Case of Sudesh and his Workers
replaced, just as concrete blocks replaced manual casting. (Pieris, 2017)
“In craft we trust, in construction, we trust blindly” - Author
Products and Processes: State of Affairs & The Construction of Urban Vernacular
In Sri Lanka, a craftsman that is concerned with producing a building is referred to as a baas. The baas is someone who specialises in a specific craft discipline and is often employed by clients, architects or construction companies to do specific architectural features or details.
Current day Sri Lanka, the notion of ‘pure’ craft is under the threat of the speed of urban vernacular developments. The Sri Lankans, have had to catch up with the speed of the development of the city. The rich architectural legacy of Bawa and his colleagues warrant a kind of patience in crafting a building. Elements of buildings are crafted, master builders in constant conversation with the architect - making the practice of architecture a slow one. In the meantime, developments of the city has left behind this domain of architecture that requires excess capital and time, and the hence the rise of urban vernacular shells and buildings designed and built by the state.
In Sri Lanka today, there are local basses all over the country that support their area’s building industry. In the southern part of Colombo, in a place called Moratuwa, Sudesh, a local craftsman specialising in the carving of timber framed windows are one of the many craftsman that have continually supported the building industry in his hometown by providing carpentry services. He operates from a small workshop not more than 30 square meters in size, with a small group of apprentices that cut and carve under his watchful eye. He passes down the techniques he had learned from his father unto his young apprentices through training and repetition of gestures. Sometimes, he provides for projects in the city of Colombo. These days it seems, the demand for crafted timber window frames for the city has waned, as urban construction techniques that warrant speed and efficiency, have found substitutes in the form of powder coated aluminium modular window frames. Labour for construction sites, were usually dependent on the scope and scale of the buildings. Villas of a larger scale saw ‘gentlemen contracting firms employed highly skilled basses or craftsman for carpentry work. Rajendran used to be one of these carpenters. A big shift in construction processes that required manual labour of the hand occurred when concrete mixing trucks and hollow concrete blocks were introduced, eradicating the need for informal labour mixing concrete and laying the aggregate. Soon Rajendran’s timber craft will soon have the fate of being
A steel supply workshop in Moratuwa
In downtown Colombo, a slew of concrete shells are being constructed everyday by a 17 labour force of both skilled and unskilled backgrounds. Some have had proper training under years of experience with construction companies, others under apprenticeship with local builders while a large part of the labour force are first time workers on site. With much of the labour force of Sri Lanka deployed abroad in the Gulf states, the diaspora of this skilled labour has left a gap in the construction industry on the island. As Sri Lanka comes out of militarization of civil war, its capital city quickly developed into one of the fastest growing cities in the world. In 2015, Mastercard Global Destination Index rated Colombo as the fastest growing city in the world. A large part of this development owes to both the boom in tourism industry and the drastic inflow of Chinese capital. (Daily Mirror, 2018) The shortage in skilled labour has perpetuated the dismal quality of buildings in the city. As a result of the growing metropole, spawns a thriving local industry of building products. From Square Hollow Sections (SHS) to