01/10/2026
Model of the Bentota Beach Hotel, Sri Lanka | at the Vitra Design Museum, 2026
From Robert’s archive:
a glimpse into the craft and experimentation behind the making of the Bentota Beach Hotel model in Sri Lanka in 2004, during the early years of his career.
These models were especially made for the “Geoffrey Bawa – Genius of the Place. An Architect of Sri Lanka” exhibition that debuted internationally at the Deutsches Architektur Museum (DAM) in Frankfurt in 2004; many years after Bentota had been completed.
Bentota Beach Hotel, Sri Lanka | in progress model, 2004
Robert carved the base with wood from local timber, to hold inlays of small rocks he picked up from the beach property itself!
For the building, he cast the bastion in concrete, formed the walls in cardboard, used a laminate in the exact shade for the roof, and shaped the columns and horizontal railings from imported walnut veneer.
To recreate the many palm trees on site, he made the trunks from broom hairs and copper wire, and used dried leaves for the palm fronds.
Bentota Beach Hotel, Sri Lanka | in progress model, 2004
Bentota Beach Hotel, Sri Lanka | in progress model, 2004
The balustrade of the railing was made with the hair of a broom!
Much like Geoffrey Bawa’s materialisation, which was mostly determined by whatever materials were available within the country, model making in Sri Lanka also came with its own set of constraints. With the country relatively closed to international trade at the time, proper model-making supplies were hard to come by, so the models were often shaped by whatever could be found or re-purposed.
Bentota Beach Hotel, Sri Lanka | in progress model, 2004
