Minnette De Silva: Intersections Book Launch

Join Head Hi and MACK as we host author and architecture historian Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi and architect Shivani Shedde for an afternoon book launch and conversation on this newly released publication exploring the work of Sri Lankan architect Minnette De Silva, one of the twentieth century’s most significant architects and cultural figures.

More about the book:

When Minnette De Silva founded the Studio of Modern Architecture in Kandy, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), in 1947, she was one of the first women in the world to establish a professional architectural practice as sole principal. Today, she is known for her designs and constructions of private residences and public institutions, settlement planning, experiments in building and handicraft, research, curation, and writing. Her practice treated architecture as a lived experience and a contemporary expression of heterogeneous pasts.

Minnette De Silva: Intersections offers a richly illustrated critical introduction to De Silva’s practice, exploring a range of projects through the intersecting intellectual concerns that shaped her work. Archival materials, drawings, photographs, and extracts from De Silva’s memoir, The Life and Work of an Asian Woman Architect, describe her diverse work in a career situated in Sri Lanka and informed by substantial engagements with India, England, Greece, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. Drawing on modernist architectural techniques and material heritage practices, De Silva forged a distinctive, critically engaged aesthetic program and set of values. This book by architectural historian Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, researched with Methmini Kariyakarawana and others, offers a primer to the thought and production of one of the twentieth century’s most significant architects and cultural figures.

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Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi is an architectural historian and Assistant Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, and author of Architecture of Migration: The Dadaab Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Settlement (Duke University Press). Her book manuscript Ecologies of the Past: The Inhabitations and Designs of Anil and Minnette de Silva draws on research for Minnette De Silva: Intersections (Mack Books). She practiced architecture for several years in Bengaluru and New York.

Shivani Shedde is PhD candidate at Princeton University where she is completing a dissertation on the spatiality of intellectual and social movements in the 20th century with a special focus on Afro-Asian solidarity. She was trained as an architect and has worked for many years in Mumbai (India).

Head Hi is an organization dedicated to art and design specializing in publications and cultural programming with an espresso bar located in Fort Greene, Brooklyn by the Navy Yard. We feature a curated selection of publications from around the globe. Working with local and international artists, designers, publishers, community members and organizations in various fields, Head Hi is a space for exploration and interaction that hosts talks, book launches, art shows, music performances and other events. 

Presented with MACK, an independent publisher of award-winning books on contemporary art, critical theory, film and architecture. They work with pioneering creative minds and institutions across the globe and pride ourselves on the rigour and care that goes into every stage of the book-making process.