With Barbara by his side he contributed greatly to local architecture
The end of a chapter: Ronald and Barbara
Professor Dr. Ronald Lewcock who passed away on Saturday, August 13, just three months after his wife, the celebrated designer Barbara Sansoni, was an illustrious scholar who contributed greatly to the understanding of the architecture and art of Sri Lanka. I am fortunate to have known him, as a student, friend and colleague.
Though Ronald was an authority in his chosen fields, he never forgot the poetics of a tropical sunset on the island’s sea; the rise of the poya moon and the colours of fall.
He could literally “walk with kings, nor lose the common touch” to quote Kipling. Ronald not only transformed the lives of generations of students but touched the lives of countless simple ordinary people he encountered. In a developing country like Sri Lanka, perhaps this is the most precious gift of all.
Born in Australia on September 27, 1929, Ronald went to Columbia University in New York on a visiting fellowship in 1963. His subject of study, which he continued to explore throughout his career, was European Colonial Architecture in Africa and Asia.
In 1968-69, a sabbatical for fieldwork brought Ronald to Sri Lanka, where he met Barbara Sansoni, whose drawings of “Collecting Old Buildings” he had seen in the Architectural Review of February 1966.
Ronald returned to Sri Lanka for three months every year during the 1970s and early ’80s for his research, broadening it to include the local vernacular. He was assisted in his work by Barbara and Laki Senanayake, who became his close friends.
Between 1976 and 1978, he wrote most of the accompanying texts, as well as designing the layout, for Barbara’s book Vihares and Verandas intended to make Sri Lankans aware of their fast disappearing built heritage.
In 1979, he was commissioned by Habitat to undertake the listing and preservation of historic buildings and zones – in the Colombo urban area which was completed the next year.
In 1980 Ronald married Barbara with whom he shared many common interests.
Between 1981 and 1984, Ronald worked on The Architecture of an Island which he co-authored with Barbara and Laki vastly extending the archive of measured drawings which had been initiated by Ulrik Plesner in the early 1960s. It showed the architecture, both domestic as well as religious, of the various indigenous ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. Published in December 1998 after 30 years of research it was illustrated with his many photographs. In 1986 Ronald reviewed ‘The architecture of Geoffrey Bawa’ for the RIBA Journal, as an introduction to Bawa’s first exhibition at the RIBA premises. In 1987, Ronald remounted this exhibition at the MIT campus at Cambridge, USA, which was accompanied by a public lecture by Bawa himself, who had been invited by Ronald as a Visiting Professor. This RIBA article was extended and issued in a profile of Geoffrey Bawa by Arredamento Dekorasyon, in 1992 in Istanbul.
In 1991, Ronald wrote a chapter on ‘The Dutch Architecture in Sri Lanka’ for R.K. De Silva and W.G.M. Beumer’s Illustrations and Views on Dutch Ceylon 1602-1796, published in Leiden.
The exhibition of Ronald’s work Nomad and the City held at the Museum of Mankind – a section of the British Museum, as part of The World of Islam Festival in 1976 became the most attended British Museum exhibition up to that time. Its original schedule of three months was extended to nine months. Recreating the bazaars within the city of San’a with sounds and even smells, and many storey high rooms, it also brought alive the tents and lifestyles of the nomads in the desert.
Ronald edited the encyclopedic San’a an Arabian Islamic City with Prof. R.B. Serjeant, published in 1983, and reprinted in 2013.
In 1976 he contributed a chapter on ‘Architects, Craftsmen and Builders: Materials and Techniques’ as well as descriptions of key monuments of Arabia (with Geoffrey King) and East Africa to George Mitchell’s all-embracing work: Architecture of the Islamic World, which has gone through many editions.
In 1984, Ronald became the first Aga Khan Professor of Architecture at MIT and was also intermittently chairman of the Aga Khan Programme at Harvard and MIT.
From 1991 Ronald again began to teach at the Georgia Institute of Technology as Professor of the Doctoral Programme in Architecture. In the same year he was appointed an Honorary Professor at the University of Queensland, where he conducted a senior course on Architectures in Asia. Ronald advised on the conservation of the Great Mosque of San’a, one of the oldest mosques in the Islamic world, originally built within the lifetime of the Prophet.
In July 2014, he was presented a lifetime achievement award from the Geoffrey Bawa Trust for his contribution to the Architecture and Art of Sri Lanka,
Ronald also wrote the text for the Geoffrey Bawa Trust’s book Laki published in June 2014, as well as the introduction to Barbara Sansoni’s A Passion for Faces. An exhibition of his amazing black & white photographs accompanied the joint exhibition with Barbara at Barefoot in April -May 2018.
One might sum up that Ronald had three segments in his illustrious career. Firstly, his research and writing on the architecture of Sri Lanka, Africa as well as of the Islamic and Colonial world. Secondly, his contribution to the building of several educational institutions. Thirdly, and perhaps, most importantly, the empowerment of younger generations of architects in their understanding and appreciation of architecture and art, appropriate to their countries of origin.
(Architect C. Anjalendran is a close friend of the Sansoni family)
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