crematorium the hindu news paper article

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Tamil Nadu - Erode Modern crematoriums in Erode, thanks to public-private initiative
Karthik Madhavan
The Erode Corporation and Rotary Club of Erode Central make substantial contributions
— PHOTO: M.GOVARTHAN Two electric crematoriums in Erode with all facilities.
ERODE: The Erode Corporation and the Rotary Club of Erode Central have set up a complex consisting of two modern crematoriums on a 2.5-acre plot here.
Called Aathma Modern Crematorium, it is a result of public-private partnership.
Two-thirds of the plot came as donation from the Rotary Club of Erode Central.
The club will manage the crematorium complex, which has an honour hall, two meditation halls, two crematoriums (one is ready for use at present), facilities for bathing, tonsure of heads, etc.
The two crematoriums are pyramid-shaped with a a chimney in the centre.
The area around the crematoriums is landscaped.
The trust plans to charge Rs. 1,300 for the last rites, which includes the cost of transportation of bodies, says trust chairman E.K. Sagadhevan.
The facility is the first of its kind to be set up utilising the Local Administration Department’s grant of Rs. 20 lakh towards the gasifier.
The Erode Corporation has come up with an equal contribution.
The crematorium has also received funds from former Erode MLA K.S. Thennarasu (Rs. 10 lakh), MLA N.K.K.P. Raja (Rs. 20 lakh), Union Minister Subbulakshmi Jagadeesan (Rs. 15 lakh) and a few others.
Condiments major Sakthi Masala has contributed Rs. 26.5 lakh, SKM Trust and Chennai Silks, Rs. 10 lakh each.

my thoughts:

the wait and the anxiety to complete the crematorum is about to be over.....

the paving of the entire site will be using 'green concepts', tiles with well designed holes that will provide scope for water percolation, pebbles, flowery plants spread all over the site

the flowersthrown all over the site along with pavement ,natural green mounds and the silent monuments for the dead on the banks of cauvery create a good setting for parting....

9 th november is the inauguration date,,then it becomes the property of the erode public

sri lanka trip geoffrey bawa the great master architect

the island.... which made me cherish every minute of my stay in geoffrey bawa s masterpieces but at the same time cry

cry ....for being ignorant of dealing with the land,trees,water,the plants etc

it has been a" dream come true" trip for me. the architectural wonders of geoffrey bawa has given me a new feel and an approach to my mindless journey.

He has showed what one can do with nature.

He doesn`t draw, but speaks to the site ,dreams in the site...... the site and he unifies...a new world,spaces filled with joy and celebration explodes.... one does not feel like coming out of those wonderful spaces ..
He does not use fancy materials,the simple grano, grey cement floors ,the white walls ,the rough wood,the metal furniture combined with wood,, the blue waters,green meadows,the coconut trees,the sounds of the birds and the distant sea......... he was a great man ,a genius who lived ,created a new way to live in this mundane,materialistic world

but went away to make symphonies in another world....... long live my great teacher. where ever you are ...

louis i kahn ,my other teacher will be there to receive you......... bye

3 a.m , early morning to welcome the day of saraswathi

8 th oct 2008

it would be nice to know his life...... iam providing you below the tribute by the guardian , u k

Geoffrey Bawa

Influential Sri Lankan architect who created new and original buildings from elements of different times and places
David Robson
The Guardian,
Friday May 30 2003
Article history
Geoffrey Bawa, who has died aged 83, was Sri Lanka's most prolific and influential architect and one of the most important Asian architects of his generation.
In the late 1950s, soon after starting work, he bought a row of four tiny bungalows in a narrow lane in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, and began to convert them, one by one, into a single house for himself. It was a project that would demonstrate his ability to bring together elements from different times and places in order to create something new and original.
Over the years, Bawa used this house as his space laboratory, creating an introspective warren of courtyards, loggias and verandahs. There were rooms without roofs, roofs without walls, pergolas, trellises, pools and fountains. Finally, he capped the composition with a white modernist tower, an echo of Corbusier's Maison Citrohan, which served as a periscope giving glimpses out across the clatter of neighbouring roofs towards the Indian ocean.
Born in what was then the British colony of Ceylon, Bawa was the son of a wealthy Muslim lawyer and his wife, a woman of mixed Dutch descent. He came to Britain in 1938 to read English at Cambridge University and study law in London. Returning to Ceylon in 1946, he worked briefly for a Colombo law firm, but after the death of his mother he abandoned the legal profession and set off on two years of restless travel.
During this time, Bawa experienced the crisis of identity that affected so many of the "people-in-between" at the end of empire. However, in 1948, as Ceylon gained independence (it became Sri Lanka in 1972), he sailed home and bought a derelict rubber estate at Lunuganga, near Bentota, with the aim of transforming it into a tropical evocation of an Italian garden.
He soon discovered that his ambitions were frustrated by his lack of technical knowledge, and embarked on a trial architectural apprenticeship with HH Reid in Colombo. After Reid's death in 1952, Bawa enrolled at the Architectural Association, in London, qualifying in 1957, at the age of 38.
Back in Colombo, he took over what was left of Reid's practice and gathered together a group of young architects and artists to join him in his search for a new, vital - and yet essentially Sri Lankan - architecture. His group included the batik artist Ena de Silva, the designer Barbara Sansoni and the artist Laki Senanayake.
In 1959, Bawa was joined by Ulrik Plesner, a young Danish architect who brought with him an appreciation of Scandinavian design and detailing, and a curiosity about Sri Lanka's building traditions. The two men formed a close friendship, and a working partnership that lasted until 1967, when Plesner returned to Europe. Bawa was then joined by the Tamil engineer K Poologasundram, who was to remain his partner for the next 20 years.
Bawa's portfolio of work included religious, social, cultural, educational, governmental, commercial and residential buildings, and in each of these areas he established a canon of new prototypes. Early experiments in what was known as tropical modernism were tempered by a growing interest in the traditional architecture and building materials of Sri Lanka.
This led to the development of an architecture that was a blend of both modern and traditional, of east and west, of formal and picturesque, that broke down the barriers between inside and outside, between building and landscape, and that offered a blueprint for new ways to live and work in a tropical city.
The house Bawa built for Ena de Silva in 1962 demonstrated a potent alternative to the colonial bungalow; the rooms turn their backs on the outside world and focus into a large central courtyard, inspired in equal measure by the atria of ancient Rome and by Kandyan manor houses. The Bentota Beach Hotel, of 1970, was one of the first of Sri Lanka's purpose-built resort hotels - offering modern creature comforts in a traditional setting - and served as a powerful inspiration for the deluge of similar buildings that followed.
Bawa's educational designs culminated in his masterly work for the new University of Ruhunu, on a coastal site near Matara, a project that occupied him for much of the 1980s. Here, a network of pavilions, loggias, courtyards and terraces are distributed with casual artfulness across a pair of rocky hills, demonstrating the architect's consummate skill at merging buildings with landscape.
In 1979, Bawa was commissioned to design Sri Lanka's new parliament building, at Kotte, on the outskirts of Colombo. Before the project was completed, in 1982, a swamp had been dredged to create an island site at the centre of a vast artificial lake, symbolising the great irrigation works of the classical period.
Seen from a distance, the asymmetric composition of copper-roofed pavilions seems to float from a series of stepped terraces that rise out of the water, creating an effect both gentle and monumental. There are references to classical Sri Lankan monastic architecture, to Kandyan temples and to the palace architecture of Kerala, but none of these are literal, and the result is wholly contemporary in spirit.
Paradoxically, the main chamber is based on the Westminster model: government and opposition members face each other across the axis of the speaker's chair, beneath a silver palm-frond chandelier hanging from a tent-like ceiling of glittering metal tiles.
When Bawa closed his practice at the end of the 1980s, it was widely assumed he would retire to Lunuganga to contemplate his garden. However, in 1990, working from his Colombo home, he began producing a steady stream of fresh designs with a small group of young architects: in 1996, he completed the Kandalama Hotel on a site looking across an ancient reservoir towards the distant citadel of Sigiriya; the following year, his minimalist design for a house on the cliffs at Mirissa finally confounded those critics who had pigeonholed him as a vernacular regionalist. Here, bedrooms and services are housed beneath a raised plinth, while a thin metal deck floats on a cluster of slender concrete columns to create a simple, open-sided loggia within a grove of coconut palms.
Bawa's two personal properties hold the key to understanding his work: the garden at Lunuganga, which he continued to fashion for almost 50 years, and his town house in Colombo. The two function as complementary opposites: the town house is a haven of peace, locked away within a busy, and increasingly hostile, city; in contrast, Lunuganga is a distant retreat, challenging the ocean horizon to the west and the switchback of hills to the east, reducing a wild landscape to a controlled series of outdoor rooms.
Since Bawa began his work, the illusion of communal harmony in Sri Lanka has been shattered by a bloody civil war. But although it might be thought that his ideas have had no direct impact on the lives of ordinary people, they have, in fact, encouraged them to value their disappearing traditions and helped them come to terms with the contradictions of their changing world.
Bawa received the Aga Khan's special award for arch- itecture in 2001. The omission of any official accolade in Britain was partially put to rights in 1998 by Prince Charles, who slipped away from the 50th anniverary celebrations of Sri Lanka's independence to pay a personal tribute to the ailing architect at Lunuganga.
• Geoffrey Manning Bawa, architect, born July 23 1919; died May 27 2003