Introducing 'Friends of Jaffna' initiative

Led by diverse professionals primarily from Jaffna, ‘Friends of Jaffna,’ is a citizen endeavour that encourages meaningful exchanges with experts from across Sri Lanka for promoting the Northern Province. Marking the first step of this effort, a guest visit of Channa Daswatte, a well-known architect from Colombo was organised to contribute to the overall objective of understanding how architecture can be maintained as a living experience across time to support a vibrant tourism industry in the north of Sri Lanka.

- By Surya VisHWA

TO look anew innovatively at breathing life into the architectural heritage of the north of Sri Lanka and rescue it from rote immobility and oblivion were among the main goals at the first event arranged by the ‘Friends of Jaffna.’ This is a collective of individuals who hope to further expand their networks across the island for the purpose of promoting the development of the Northern Province, especially in travel and cultural tourism related domains.

They plan to promote the Northern Province in general and Jaffna in particular, by highlighting the expertise it has and integrating it with the rest of the country.

The first such expertise exchange was held at the Catamaran, the Vaddukkoddai resi-

dence of Ajantha Subramaniam who is one of the key founders of ‘Friends of Jaffna.’ Her home could be categorised as a heritage building, constructed by her parents and grandparents around 80 years ago. It is one of the buildings in the peninsula that showcase typical traditional Jaffna style architecture and had been renovated 10 years ago under the supervision of Channa Daswatte. Channa had trained and worked with the iconic Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, later serving as the Chairperson of the Galle Heritage Foundation.

Aesthetically reframed

The ancestral residence of Ajantha Subramaniam which had suffered years of neglect and wartime destruction had been aesthetically reframed by Channa’s team to match its previous architectural prototype. This is to be the main location for the cultural programs and gatherings curated by the Friends of Jaffna in their effort to shape the North into the vibrant tourism alcove it is fast becoming. Among their list of priorities, encouraged by those such as Channa, is to help officials of Jaffna connected to areas such as tourism and archaeology identify heritage homes and other buildings which may have been overlooked for their time based significance.