Starter Kit. Idea 385 of 500. Cluster 19
Architecture tours of Bawa's buildings with the houses opened by their owners
The mechanism, from the book
Eight World Heritage Sites and 2,300 years of records, and the country's story is told to the world by other people.
The first step
Write to the owners of three Bawa buildings that are private homes or hotels and ask whether they would open for a small group once a month for a share of the ticket. Then post a single dated tour with a price in two architecture forums abroad. Tickets sold within a fortnight tell you whether to run it monthly.
- Who pays first
- An architect or architecture student abroad who knows Bawa's work from books and would pay to walk through the buildings with access arranged.
- What leaves today
- Bawa's ideas built the resorts of Asia, yet the island earns little from the people who come to study them; opened houses and paid tours change that.
Ask first
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask whether a guided tour business must be registered and its guides licensed.
Check before you spend
Each owner's written agreement on dates, group size and ticket share, insurance for visitors on private property, and whether your guides need a licence.
Find out these three numbers
- How many tickets sell within a fortnight?
- What ticket price do architecture visitors accept?
- What share of each ticket will each owner want?
A comparison from the book
Bentota and the hotels of Asia. Chapter Three
"the most expensive hotels in Asia look the way they do because"
Bawa's influence is a story the world knows; opening his buildings lets visitors pay to see the source.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.