Wednesday, January 18, 2012

India to construct a cultural center in Sri Lanka's Tamil heartland of Jaffna

As part of its development partnership with Sri Lanka and in response to the request by the Government of Sri Lanka, the Government of India is undertaking a project to construct a Cultural Centre at Jaffna at an estimated cost of Rs. 900 million.



In a ceremony held Tuesday, India's Minister for External Affairs S. M. Krishna and Sri Lankan Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa presented awards to the top three designs submitted by architects whose entries were selected by a jury after the completion of the National Design Competition for the Jaffna Cultural Centre.

The awards involve a prize amount of US$ 3,500 for the 1st prize, US$ 3,000 for the 2nd prize and US$ 2,500 for the third.

The Jury has unanimously selected the design submitted by Architect Madura Premathileka as the first place design, the design submitted by Cynthia & Athula Ranasinghe Chartered Architects as the second and the design submitted by Design Consortium (Pvt) Ltd. as the third.

The first place winner presented his design before the Indian and Sri Lankan ministers at the ceremony on Tuesday.

India has undertaken the project to preserve and foster the rich cultural heritage of the Jaffna District and other nearby areas, which are replete with historical, archeological and religious resources.
"It is decided to develop the Jaffna Cultural Centre as an iconic building that would serve as a cynosure of cultural activities in Northern Sri Lanka," the Indian High commission said in a statement.
The Centre is also intended to create opportunities for cooperation amongst all Sri Lankan communities, including Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese.
The primary purpose of the Jaffna Cultural Centre would be to provide a cultural and social space for the people of Jaffna to enjoy various local and international cultural products, apart from serving as a delivery centre for training, instructions and education in a variety of cultural disciplines. For these purposes, the Centre would comprise a theatre-style auditorium (with projection facilities) with a capacity of about 600 people, a multimedia library with on-line research facilities, exhibition and gallery space and a museum. It would also have an instructional wing, which would have facilities for the conduct of classes in vocal and instrumental music, dance and languages, including a language lab. It would also be able to serve as a hub for civil society activities, for which purpose it would include a conference hall-cum-seminar room.

Both governments have jointly decided to conduct a National Design Competition in order to select the best design for the Cultural Centre that would take these requirements into account.

The Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (SLIA) was entrusted with the task of conducting the National Design Competition in two separate rounds.

A seven-member jury, co-chaired by High Commissioner of India Ashok K. Kantha, and President of SLIA Ranjan Nadesapalli, one architect each from SLIA and India, one representative each from the governments of India and Sri Lanka, and the Mayor of Jaffna evaluated the entries received during the National Design Competition. The entries were evaluated by the jury without the knowledge of the architects, through a process of assigning code numbers to each entry.

During the first round of the design competition, the jury shortlisted eight designs for the second round of competition out of 29 designs it received. The evaluation of these eight entries was based on a number of carefully identified criteria such as the technical acceptability, context plan, aesthetic / architectural language, space efficiency, buildabillity and environmentally friendly, sustainable architecture.
At the end of the process, the Jury unanimously selected the best three designs.
This Project is one of the many initiatives taken by the Indian government to assist the people of Sri Lanka.

It will be implemented under grant assistance from the Government of India with the cooperation of the Ministry for Economic Development and the local Government.

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