Geoffrey Bawa Collection
Phantom Hands, under an exclusive license from the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, has re-edited a collection of furniture, lighting, and objects, designed by the iconic Sri Lankan architect’s practice between the mid 1960s and mid 1990s.
Meticulously choreographed, the decor in Bawa’s indoor spaces was typically a combination of disparate objects. The old and the new, found objects and collectible design, were often strung together to furnish a scenography in which landscape, nature, material and objects came together seamlessly. It is perhaps unsurprising that a lot of the furniture for his projects was designed by Bawa himself.
Aside from trying to sync together his aesthetic vision, Bawa created furniture out of necessity and constraints. Sri Lanka’s import restrictions made acquiring foreign items difficult, but as a well-traveled, cosmopolitan, man of means, the spaces he imagined often involved objects he had seen elsewhere. Moreover, his clients often had very tight budgets for furniture. To make up, Bawa regularly created adaptations of furniture he admired with the help of local craftspeople. He also created original pieces, made singularly for the purpose of furnishing his architectural projects. Whether replicated, adapted, or entirely new, much like his architecture, Bawa’s furniture remained deeply responsive to climate, locally available materials, and traditional craftsmanship.
Many of the pieces Bawa created remained in the spaces they were designed for. Some remain in use even today. Select sample pieces can be found in his homes. On the whole, however, Bawa’s furniture was not exhaustively documented and no comprehensive collection existed. Even admirers of the architect thus mostly remain strangers to them and, being isolated, they to each other.
Phantom Hands’ ‘Geoffrey Bawa Collection’, began with the simple mission of identifying and recreating furniture created by the architect. This posed its own unique challenges. Bawa’s designs are almost all site specific. They were also created at a distinct historical moment, and thus shaped by material and time constraints, making them deeply contextual. Removing them from their setting and reinterpreting them via extensive R&D almost invariably meant assigning them new meaning. Further, many of Bawa’s pieces existed in forms best described as prototypes. Plans of recreating them then centred around a key question: Should they be considered final designs or evolving concepts? In the end, the process became a study in authenticity—what truly defines the original?
Reconstructing pieces for this collection then became an exercise in retracing Bawa’s line of thought, treating objects as insights into his design intentions rather than fixed, final products. This also meant updating the production process of the furniture and using the best possible skill, technology and resources available in the present day, a far cry from much of what was available to the architect.
Bawa’s legacy rests on his sensitivity to place, context, climate, and sustainability—long before these ideas became central to modern architectural discourse. Revisiting his work thus invariably meant considering how these factors have shifted over time, from the circumstances on the planet to material availability, ethical sourcing, and environmental impact. As a result, this collection is more than a reproduction—it is a re-edition, guided by the same adaptability and awareness that defined Bawa’s original designs.
