Vernacular dwellings in Ceylon are houses out of wattle and daub with thatched roofs. More simple huts consisted of a slanted roof and just one room. An open sided pavilion provided shelter from the monsoon rain, shielded from the sun, but allowed light and a breeze to penetrate the structure. More evolved dwellings, valauvas, belonging to wealthier families, consisted of four rectangular buildings, one of them a barn, creating a courtyard in the middle, with meda midula and verandahs on the outside. The inner courtyard was meant to be used by women and children as social space, for household work like weaving, as a small space for cultivating herbs, and sometimes for keeping small pets. (Hettiarachchi 2002) The midula provides light, clean air, a private space, and tranquility. With the addition of other rooms, new midulas could be created, resulting in a large house for more families or relatives with connected but separate parts. (Hettiarachchi 2002) The meda midula resembled the Roman peristyle courtyard used in Portuguese architecture, as Barbara Sansoni notes in “The Architecture of an Island.” (Sansoni 1998) But there are no domestic buildings from this period left. (Gerlach)
The meda midula also existed in the version of Dutch Colonial Architecture on the island. Ronald Lewock notes: “Thus in the first phase of Dutch architecture Portuguese influence is evident. This can be seen in the projecting screened balconies visible in the drawings of old government house in the overall character of models and arches. The basic concept of the newer buildings, however, became Dutch. The scale was everywhere increased, rooms became wider and higher, windows and doors larger, and the old Portuguese ‘solar’ plan – by which the house was focused on a large open arcaded veranda with only a single range of rooms around it – was modified by the enclosure of the ‘solar’ to form a wide back room, the ‘achterhuis’; this ran transversely across the plan and was entered in the center from a wide entrance hall with main sleeping rooms or offices arranged symmetrically on either side of it. Once established, this type of plan was used for all buildings, whether houses or public buildings, for the remainder of the Dutch period. The transverse rear living room looked into a colonnaded courtyard, derived from the Portuguese interpretation of the Singhalese main domestic space, the ‘matha midula’.” (Lewock 1988)The colonial British architecture on Sri Lanka featured more of an “unsatisfactory mixture of European (predominantly British) styles which neither blended harmoniously with the landscape nor coped successfully with the rigors of tropical climate. (….) In painting, no less than in sculpture and architecture, the break with tradition was complete.” (De Silva 1981)
Minnette de Silva rejected the idea of using traditional ways to build houses just because they were traditional, as buildings have to meet the needs of life. Instead she recommended the use of traditional materials and ventilation techniques. As Liane Lefaivre pointed out, Minnette de Silva preserved the midula. In her Cost Effective Housing Studies (1954-55), she wrote, "we must re-orient our ideas for living comfortably in congested towns like Colombo, where we no longer have expansive acres of garden and spacious pillared halls of the pre-Second World War days. How can we create this comfortable atmosphere in small restricted sites of 15 or 20 perches of ground?" She continues, "I considered the movement of air within the house as one of the primary concerns and was to achieve this with the utilization of split-levels, midulas and stairwells situated in the center of the plan." The midula is used in Minnette de Silva’s Senanayake Flats for air circulation; in other houses the original function of the midula as a social place for the family is translated in special spaces for extended family rituals. (Lefaivre/Tzonis, 2001) When Chandigarh was first planned by Matthew Nowicki and Albert Mayer, before Le Corbusier was in charge, they also used a courtyard concept. “Nowicki’s intention in all his designs for Chandigarh was to blend modern architectural solutions with the Indian way of life.” (Kalia, 1987) In awareness of “keeping the Indian tradition, houses were designed around the courtyards, creating privacy.” (Kalia 1987)
(MH)


Sources:
De Silva, K.M. (1981): A history of Sri Lanka. London: C. Hurst & Co.
Gerlach, Peter (undated): "Documentation Project." (January 12, 2012)
Hettiarachchi, Kumara (2002): "Notes for a study on the Harmonious Socio-Cultural Cooperation in Materialization of Native Wattle Cottage and Daily-Used Objects in Sri Lanka." In: Journal of Cultural Studies in Body, Design, Media, Music and Text. Issue 02/02/2002. 128.
Kalia, Ravi (2000): Chandigarh: the making of an Indian. Dehli: Oxford University Press.
Lefaivre, Liane/Tzonis, Alexander (2001): "The Suppression and Rethinking of Regionalism and Tropicalism after 1945." In: Lefaivre, Liane/Tzonis, Alexander/Stagno, Bruno (Eds.): Tropical Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization. Chichester: Wiley Academy.
Lewock, Ronald (1988): "Dutch Architecture in Sri Lanka." In: De Silva, Rajpal Kumar/Beumer, Willemina G. M.: Illustrations and views of Dutch Ceylon, 1602-1796: a comprehensive work of Dutch Ceylon. London, New York, Colombo: Serendip Publications.
Sansoni, Barbara (1998): "Making of the Book." In: Lewock, Ronald/Sansoni, Barbara / Senanayake, Laki (Eds.). The Architecture of an Island. Colombo: Barefoot Ltd.