User:Dan arndt/Steel Corporation Offices

The Steel Corporation Offices and housing were designed by Geoffrey Bawa in 1966–1969 The steel mills at Oruwala (on the outskirts of Colombo) were built with Soviet aid to manufacture steel sections from imported billets. Bizarrely, following the whim of a government minister, they were located far from the Colombo port, in the midst of rubber and coconut plantations where a large reservoir was created to store water for cooling. Bawa was commissioned to design the main office building along with various staff and ancillary buildings and he advised on the design of the cladding of the main production buildings. The project architect was Anura Ratnavibushana. The three-storey office building projects into the reservoir with an outward-stepping section to provide shade and rain-shelter. The walls are formed from a matrix of pre-cast concrete units, some glazed and some open. As a result the interiors are protected from direct sunshine and filled with light and air. Seen from the reservoir bund, the building has been described as looking "like an elegant Mississippi river boat moored to the shore". The factory entrance was recently shifted from the west to the east of the site where a new and predictably ugly office building has been erected, leaving the original building empty and forlorn. One hopes that it will be saved from destruction and that a new use will be found for it. Bawa also designed a staff housing scheme and a guest house to the west of the steel mills. The elegant housing is arranged in rows along the contours. Each house is entered via a projecting porte-cochère and opens into a walled courtyard garden. The long guest house is raised off the ground on a plinth and its roof tips upwards at the gables in the manner of Bawa's earlier design for the Shell Bungalow in Anuradhapura. The neighbouring kitchen block is square in plan with a stepped roof rising to a clerestory. Both the housing and the guest house are still in use.

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