Project Details Name of Project/ Entry Rustic Cabin Behind the Cloister Year of Completion 2021 Project Description Behind the cloister of a perforated brick facade, the rustic cabin stands with its modest architectural outlook, overlooking the surrounding sensory-rich environment, making conversations with the melodic tales of lush, colorful, and textural paddy fields downhill and the stream of the gentle breeze that swirls across the landscape and sails through the apertures of the exposed brick facades. Located in Mandawala, a quiet hilly precinct in the Gampaha District, Sri Lanka, and surrounded by basins of paddy fields and isolated boulders and plateaus, nature has provided quite an inspirational and resourceful setting, along with a set of demands for the architect to create this extraordinary architectural masterpiece, not to preside over but simply touch the poetic rhythm of the space. Design Challenges: Bringing in a top-notch home design that is energy-efficient, sustainable, and environmentally friendly, that fosters a lasting relationship with its existing natural resources, that allows all of its built spaces to fully experience the beautiful surroundings while still affording privacy, that addresses the extreme heat and tropical downpours, and that converges all of the above within a highly restricted budget to complement the client's traditional lifestyle and the architect's professional satisfaction were the architect’s primary design challenges. Concept formulation: The architect, has been exceedingly bountiful in accepting all of the challenges bestowed upon him and braiding them into splendid assets to express his maximum creativity and problem-solving ability, utilizing his favorite themes and forms while also embracing the existing unique resources the site offers: the red Kabook soil of the site (the rare ironstone soil found in Sri Lanka) and the breathtaking surrounding nature of the location were architect’s primary inspirations to come up with his initial conceptual thoughts. In essence, the innovative spatial planning techniques, along with nature’s own soothing strategies—materials, colors, and remedies—used to overcome design challenges, have shaped the initial design ideas to form the primary design concept of the project: the Rustic Cabin Behind The Cloister, an open-plan, airy home that ardently placed itself within nature under its protection, nurturing, and care without being a burden to the ground. Site preparation: The site preparation was done in such a way to achieve the status quo that this bare, hard-filled, sloping land had originally been divided into two segments using a retaining wall: the first segment that closely borders the street is leveled and eight feet higher than the second portion of the land, which is ushered to slope down toward the paddy fields. The breakage of the land had been the foundational step in locating the house on the upper portion closer to the front street, the highest position of the land, with its rear longitudinally facing the paddy.