ABSTRACT
The mobilizing paradigms of travel and encounters enable new insights into architectural production amidst a tangle of routes. Clifford's case for cultural routes characterizes these dynamic relationships: The new paradigms begin with historical contact, with entanglement at intersecting regional, national and transnational levels. The courtyard tradition clearly exemplifies a tangle of routes and reveals the multiplicity of faiths, cultures and ethnicities that architecture can simultaneously accommodate, while not being determined by them through fixed relationships. Clifford's provocative concept of cultural routes has further inspired reflection in this chapter on the disparate activities of travel that have shaped the history of Sri Lanka. A tangle of cultural routes has emerged that displaces essentialist readings of both Bawa's oeuvre and Sri Lankan architecture as an architecture that is rooted in place. Since Sri Lankan architecture has been shaped by religious, micro-climatic, socio-economic, gender and class differences any reference to Sri Lankan vernacular as a homogeneous entity is highly problematic.
