A young architect’s dissertation-proposal to rejuvenate the Vedda Community

A serendipitous meeting! It demonstrated to me the skilful intelligence of one young man with his innovative and highly helpful project; which skills and innovation could very well be indicative of most Sri Lankan youth. It also brought to focus the dire need to encourage such persons, first with publicity and then with assistance to have their projects materialize. I proposed I make wider known his brilliant concept and ways of achieving the project by writing about it to the Sunday Island. He accepted my proposal and agreed to be interviewed and share his ideas with me and thus the readership of this newspaper.

The young man is Chamith Rangana Dissanayake who has very recently graduated from the Department of Architecture of the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University. I inquired about his thesis. His answer ignited serendipity in me and a rekindling of hope that all is not lost in this island of ours. Youth talent, zest and innovation given encouragement and assistance, could raise our land from the depths it has been driven to.

Chamith Dissanayake’s CDP Project

Chamith’s fifth year final project which he labored over for one year and presented as his CDP – Comprehensive Design Project – was Rejuvenating the Vedda Community. He said he had two projects in mind: Redesigning the Nugegoda Market incorporating better use of available space, increasing functionality etc. The second was the Vedda project.

The inspiration for this second idea was a paper he read and researched by Architect Diebedo Francis Kere who reconstructed, or rather had the villagers reconstruct, his home-village school from a ramshackle set of rooms to a spanking new complex in Gando, South Africa. The challenges to be considered and overcome were parameters of construction feasibility, cost, resource availability, climatic conditions. Greatly motivated, Chamith mentally transferred this reconstruction to the Vedda Community of Dambana.

In the two paged summary of his project Chamith states his research title as: Investigation on sustainable design strategies to conserve native tribal villages, with special reference to Dambana, Sri Lanka. His background info reads thus: “’Enforced primitivism’ is one of the popular practices and a policy which imposes to conserve native communities,…. Therefore it is important to investigate on sustainable design strategies to conserve native tribal villages and propose a dynamic mechanism to apply those strategies in an architectural design.”

In his Analysis of the Research Problems he writes: “Measures taken to conserve native indigenous tribes in Sri Lanka are too traditional, less effective and not functioning. There has been no dynamic mechanism, strategy or system to deliver indigenous native sustained knowledge to the outer modern society.” He says these indigenous cultures are decaying, thus his suggested and laid out intervention. And so the need to find a new updated architectural design solution to conserve native tribal villages, bridging the native tribal culture with modern society and a new perspective to motivate tourism in Sri Lanka.

He mentioned that when spending time with the Dambane Veddas he saw firsthand difficulties they suffered: being, if I may word it thus, still somewhat hunter-gatherers but settled down and absorbing village ways and social living. The children of Vedda communities often drop out of school, village schools which now they attend, due to poverty, difficulty in integrating and mixing with purely village living kids. Language too proves problematic; though they do not now speak pure Vedda dialect, they use words of their parents and grandparents which may sound strange to Sinhala and Tamil children and thus cause teasing and alienation. He points out that women and children are spoilt by the sex trade that has insidiously crept in; men imbibe intoxicants excessively and neglect their families; women seek jobs in villages, thus leaving their children uncared for.

His dissertation begins with the history and cultural identity of the Vedda Community; current phenomena regarding the Vedda Community cultural change; issue identification; and path to the master proposal; enhanced by colour photographs. He quotes others and the Socio-Anthropological Research Project on Vedda Community in Sri Lanka by Premakumara De Silva and Asitha G Punchihewa; Dept of Sociology, University of Colombo, August 2011, “Most of the problems and issues are based on the diversified economic situation of the Vedda Community.”

Examples quoted

Chamith of course did much research, and studied closely other tribal cultural heritage and community centers, worldwide, and the Sri Lankan Purana Gama, Nochiyagama, Anuradhapura. His dissertation includes descriptions of community centers in British Columbia, Colorado, New Mexico, India, Cornwall, UK. He details the reconstructions and the architects involved in each case study. For example in the Purana Gama, the village was recreated as a living museum with Wadu, Hetti, Ridee, Yak and Nakaath Gederas. This concept project of B Chandrasiri was completed in 2018.

Chamith identifies three areas for development of the Veddha community while keeping intact their culture, indigenous ways, habits, beliefs et al. They are no longer pure hunters and gatherers; rather are they settled down whether in the forest or even in villages, integrating with these people. They are already, rudimentarily, into the three areas of activity identified.

His first suggested recommendation is to target tourism by organising regional or zonal development plans mapping potential areas that could attract local and foreign tourists. He promotes the Vakarai Veddas as the focus of the tourism angle. His second suggestion is developing agriculture, which the Veddas carry out, but with better management of produce. His third suggestion is to improve self employment by selecting the local case study of Dambana tribal village and investigating existing characteristics/issues/pros and cons to develop an economical model and apply strategies. He advocates the harnessing of the private sector for funding the project and makes clear government involvement is essential.

He has divided the development project into three phases.

Site A: selected for a Tribal development centre; museum and entry building to the village.

Site B: the agricultural zone with cultivable land, easily accessible water and buildings to facilitate correct storage of produce.

Site C: a tourist ‘hotspot’ close to the Maduruoya jungle accommodating familiarization with Vedda culture; their crafts. All buildings have been designed.

As I said before, the project and presentation as his dissertation are excellent. Chamith got an A+ grade for it. He mentioned specifically Dr (Archt.) F R Arooz who was his excellent guide and mentor who, he said, encouraged him to write a comprehensive dissertation.