Photographic and printed material, Bank of Ceylon headquarters building (1986), Colombo, Sri Lanka 斯里蘭卡科倫坡錫蘭銀行總部大樓（1986年）影像及印刷資料

The Bank of Ceylon headquarters, in Colombo, was the first high-rise in Sri Lanka, and one of only two projects realised by Singapore-based Architects Team 3 outside Singapore and Malaysia, where the firm built several commercial headquarters through the 1970s. Oliver Weerasinghe, Sri Lanka’s first city planner, was familiar with firm partner Lim Chong Keat’s work for the United Nations in Singapore and facilitated the commission. Completed in 1987, the thirty-two-storey tower signifies a moment of expansion for the government-owned bank, which had recently established subsidiaries in merchant banking and property development. As an important element in Colombo’s skyline, the project reaffirmed the identity of Colombo’s Fort financial district as a centre for a globalising banking industry into the 1990s.

Sited along the ocean, the twelve-sided building reads as a cylinder covered in white tiles; this form has earned it the nickname ‘pittu bambuwa’, a reference to a traditional, tube-shaped Sri Lankan cooking device. Between each face of the tower, a rounded column runs its full height, spanning inset floors with balconies and large areas of dark, tiled glass at its top and base. Visitors enter through a multilevel trapezoidal structure that anchors the tower’s eastern half. The tower’s prismatic design recalls Architects Team 3’s earlier projects for high-rises—such as the United Overseas Bank headquarters in Singapore and Kompleks Tun Abdul Razak in Penang—reflecting Lim Chong Keat’s commitment to this volume, which presents the same facade from every angle to relate to a nascent context.

The series consists of a set of negatives showing plans and sections, a photographic rendering, a photograph of the completed building, and a set of negatives showing the interior and exterior of the building.