KITHUL-AMI by Kengo Kuma and Associates

A pavilion for the centenary celebration of Sri Lankan architect Geoffery Bawa’s birth. By using a local vine called Kithul, often used in Sri Lankan traditional craft, we tried to achieve the softness of Bawa’s architecture. The pavilion is a hybrid structure of Kithul and steel mesh, providing a botanical materiality, while at the same time being very durable. Morphologically we avoided sharpness and rectilinearity as much as possible; instead we searched for an amorphous form in the language of a conti