Minnette de Silva (Sinhala: මිනට් ද සිල්වා;Tamil: மினிட் டி சில்வா; 1 February 1918 – 24 November 1998) was an internationally recognised architect, considered the pioneer of the modern architectural style in Sri Lanka.

[4][5][6] These and other European traders, sailors, and officials had settled there[7][8] and given rise to a small Eurasian ethnic group of mixed descent, the Burgher people.

A recent critic wrote: "In her home country, she remained an outsider due to her mixed heritage; while in the West, her beauty and clothes served to exoticise her.

Lauded as a "champion of the poor",[11] he served as President of the Ceylon National Congress, and as a Minister of Health (his own father had been an Ayurvedic physician).

His eulogy was delivered by none other than the sometime prime minister, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, who compared him to an early president of the United States: "In the mould of Abraham Lincolon [sic], he was a man who travelled from the Log Cabin to White House".

Minette de Silva also recounts that her mother’s involvement in the Arts and Crafts Movement exposed her to various traditions that are reflected in her later work as an architect.

Her brother Fredrick de Silva became a lawyer and politician, serving as Mayor of Kandy, a member of Parliament, and Ambassador to France.

de Silva did not complete her formal education, due to circumstances related to her father’s financial crisis and political life, and her mother’s ailing health.

[23] During a brief visit to Ceylon, de Silva met Herwald Ramsbotham, the Governor-General of Ceylon, who took a keen interest in her situation and personally intervened in his capacity as head of the Education Committee in the UK and managed to arrange a place for her at the Architectural Association to allow her to take a special Royal Institute of British Architects examination for returning students for the War.

Although her parents would have liked her to take a reliable salaried position, she stayed in Kandy and pursued her career independently,[27] as she had her roots there and it was the cultural and traditional centre of the nation.

[27] de Silva who as a child lived and moved among Kandyan artists and craftsmen would be taken by her parents to see the ancient Sinhalese architecture of the Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa periods.

During this period she curated an exhibition that was shown at the Commonwealth Institute in London with the large collection of photographs of vernacular Asian architecture she had amassed.

The centre was designed with many levelled Kandyan flat tiled roofs and symbiotic indigenous features, thorana (gateways), midulas (open courts), mandapas (pavilions), rangahala (space for dance and music), avanhala (refectory).

The centre was designed as a large interactive space where a number of activities could take place with a strong symbiotic relationship of architecture and entertainment.

A Kandyan village setting with trees and plants was a pleasing foil to the Temple of the Tooth and the Malwatta Vihara (residence of the high priest of the sect).

[3] In 1996, two years before her death, after being largely ignored during much of her career, de Silva was awarded the Gold Medal by the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects.

[10] She is considered to be one of the thinkers behind critical regionalism, an approach which seeks to provide an architecture rooted in the modern tradition, but tied to geographical and cultural context.