Drawing on Elements from the Past for Nationalist Superiority: Deconstructing the Political Subtext of YMBA Building In Colombo Fort, Sri Lanka

Architecture has frequently served political purposes throughout history. The YMBA building in Colombo Fort, Sri Lanka, was constructed by the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA); once a leading organization in the Buddhist revival movement. The building effort that aligned with the decolonization movement led by the indegenious Sinhalse-Buddhist community, incorporated numerous traditional elements from Kandyan architecture. This repeteoure included the Paththirippuwa (octagonal pavilion) from the Temple of the Tooth Relic, as a strategy to regionalize architecture within the Ceylonese context, while simultaneously incorporating modernist architectural elements, materiality, and construction methods of Western origin.
The YMBA building was designed to contrast Colombo Fort’s cityscape, particularly the nearby Gafoor Building; a quintessential manifestation of British colonial architecture. This contrast generated a rift between two oposing political ideologies of the time, visibly reflected through two disparate architectural approches. In this context, it is hypothesized that the YMBA building was an intentional attempt to assert indigenous ideological dominance over colonialism, visually. This research ascertains if this is the case. This study employs a qualitative research method and uses case studies as its strategy. While using tabulation for analysis, as the interpretation strategy, it employs Derridean deconstruction to investigate the political subtext of the YMBA building. The research was carried out in January 2022. By deconstructing the building, the intent of the nationalistic political movements of the day to become the most hierarchically powerful ideology of the nation will be tackled, relying on extant secondary data. The study leads the discourse to question the term ‘pseudo’ to describe the nationalistic architectural tradition in which, buildings are decorated with traditional motifs and elements.
The research identifies that the YMBA building, with its exaggerated Kandyan-inspired elements, symbolically asserts nationalist identity by visually overpowering colonial architecture. This reflects the nationalist appropriation of logocentric hierarchies to counter colonial dominance, thereby validating the research hypothesis. The study also exposes contradictions extant in the architectural discourse such as privileging decorative symbolism over functionalism.