Restoration or innovation, every project has a story
Twenty years later, another spectacular design, with views all around: ‘The House of Seven Screens’ built for an Armenian Middle Eastern designer incorporating touches of her own culture in the ‘mashrabiya’ – the traditional privacy screens, creating a shifting interplay of pattern and shadows.
The house on the hill: The Jamie Residence
Variously described not just as architects but also as historians and designers, Frank and Ravi – whose partnership Escher GuneWardena Architecture was begun in 1997 – have restored some notable California houses:Richard Neutra’s Lovell Health House, John Lautner’s Chemosphere as well as his personal residence, Gregory Ain’s Greene Residence and the home of Paul R. Williams among others. And while these landmark restoration projects have been defining in many ways, their practice has embraced innovation and modernity with equal success.
Meeting us at No 11, 33rd Lane, Bagatelle Road, in Geoffrey Bawa’s Colombo home – now impeccably restored – on the morning of their Bawa memorial lecture on Thursday, they are as eloquent as they are engaging and as conversation flows from architecture to art and history, it is easy to see how these abiding interests play into their lives. ‘Clocks and Clouds’, is the title of their lecture; also of the book on their architecture published in 2017.
At Bawa's Colombo home: Ravi GuneWardena and Frank Escher talk of architecture, art and history. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
He may have left Sri Lanka as a child of eight, but Ravi is proud of his Sri Lankan roots. Born in Dehiwala, he moved with his family to LA, when his father Shelton Gunewardena, a radio engineer who worked for Radio Ceylon and The Voice of America took up a job there. Ravi had his architectural training at the Cal Poly Pomona and spent a year studying art history and architecture in Florence, Italy.
Frank grew up in a very international household, speaking Spanish with his Central American mother, German with his Swiss father; his parents conversing in French and English. He lived in Zurich from the age of five and studied at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) there before returning to the US, where he would soon become involved in researching the work of master architect John Lautner, then little recognised. Frank’s book ‘John Lautner – Architect’ was the first volume published on the architect.
Years later, Escher GuneWardene Architecture would be asked to restore one of Lautner’s best known houses ‘Chemosphere’, perched on a precipitous LA hillside. Here they looked to stay true to the architect’s original vision for the house, that had not been realised in building due to mostly economic constraints. Currently restoring Lautner’s own house, the house he built for himself just after he left Frank Lloyd Wright’s employment (1933-38), they are adding an additional studio level apartment on the lower level for the owner, keeping the additions within the envelope of the house. “It’s a relatively small, modest house, but it’s beautiful – a little jewel box,” says Frank.
This singular appreciation and respect for all what has gone before that they bring to every project, is a defining feature of their work. “Historic preservation isn’t simply about restoring a building. It is restoring or it’s conserving history….. conserving social history, cultural history,” says Frank.
“We are quite lucky that in Los Angeles, there is a great collection of very important 20th century buildings. Every project is different. The Eames house, another LA landmark, is like a museum, it’s like restoring an art object.”
Ravi explains that in such restoration projects, the first phase involves exhaustive research of archival material and plans, any kinds of documentation, photography – “a sort of research and gathering phase”. Then comes the stage of comparing the original documents to what has been built - for there may be deviations made by the architect or by a second or third owner. So many judgements to be made, whether they should take it back to the original……. day one, or if 10 years later, another well-known architect had made an intervention; should they keep that ………..… or the new owner may want to update certain things.
Frank adds that on such major restoration projects, they have the benefit of collaborating with a team of experts, historians, technical experts, scientists. For a project that they are completing right now – Richard Neutra’s famous Lovell Health House built in 1929 – they enlisted the help of Dr. Barbara Lamprecht, recognised internationally as the Neutra authority with archival research.
It is a fascinating project, notes Frank, for he considers the Lovell House to be one of the ten most significant houses in the United States of the 20th century. “We felt it was important to go back to what this house was in 1929, and to really restore it very carefully.
“It was one of the first times that a steel structure was used in residential architecture. We were trying to find out what had changed during construction or what had changed after construction in 90 years. And so this always makes these projects really quite interesting, because every project has a different story.”
Restoration projects can be rather technical. In the Eames House – oft described as a ‘modernist masterpiece’ – the Getty Conservation Institute provided paint stratigraphy, where a microscopic sample of paint is taken to analyse all the different layers to determine the original colour of the walls making a scientific estimate of when each layer was made.
Deeply conscious of LA’s rich architectural history and that of its people, they worked for some ten years ‘practically pro-bono’ on the restoration of the Church of the Epiphany built in 1887 – even fundraising for it through their artist friends and getting it listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The oldest Episcopalian church in the city, it was known for its role in the Chicano civil rights movement in the mid to late 19th century.
Delivering the Bawa memorial lecture
A recent project is the non-denominational meditation centre they are building for a Sri Lankan client in a beautiful setting at the foothills of Mount Gabriel on a 100-acre property, their design wrapped around the “exquisite terracing of the land”, with utmost care. The campus has elements of Sri Lankan architecture, albeit modernised, distilled; traditional roof forms, open halls and verandahs. It is to be a place for retreat, with a community hall, a garden for ayurvedic plants and indigenous American plants used in native American medicine. The master plan is completed and awaiting approval from the government organizations that oversee the property.
Their shared passion for art has also seen them involved in many curatorial projects for artists and museums. With the ‘Jewelled Isle’ an exhibition of Sri Lankan art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 2019, Ravi found that this major exhibition of Sri Lankan artefacts comprised almost entirely Buddhist art. Initially the exhibit had been of works from LACMA’s own collection, but on Ravi’s insistence and guidance, works from other museums were sourced and when it finally opened, ‘The Jewelled Isle’ had some 250 works representing nearly two millennia of Sri Lankan history.
Landmark construction: Richard Neutra's Lovell Health House
Ikebana, interestingly is another of Ravi’s skills and he curated an exhibition ‘Living Flowers: Ikebana and Contemporary Art’ at LA’s Japanese American National Museum. It all came about when Frank gave him a birthday gift of five classes with a Japanese expert. “After two classes, I was hooked” and he is very much involved in the LA branch of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana.
Delivering the Bawa lecture on Thursday evening at the SLFI, Ravi expressed joy at being honoured in his own country. Come December, they will return, bringing with them a group from the Society of Architectural Historians to tour Sri Lanka’s ancient architectural marvels from Anuradhapura to Kandy. And of course, take in some of Bawa’s signature work.
Having built so many homes for others, what of their own? They are partners in life as well. They have found their ideal site and long intrigued by early types of building in California, they are looking at building in the adobe style, similar to the kabook houses in Sri Lanka– their plans in the design stage now, they say. A modern house made using an ancient technique.
Key to their thinking is the need to read the landscape, read the land and be able to imagine a dialogue between the land and the building. “Siting the house within the landscape without destroying it. Frank Lloyd Wright did that, John Lautner did that and so did Geoffrey Bawa.”
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