Colombo Court Blog The Hotel
From scrap to sculpture: the recycled art at Colombo Court
Every sculpture, lampshade and fountain here began as something thrown away. Why we chose to build with discarded metal, and the artists who made it beautiful.
The first thing you meet in the lobby is a tree that reaches three floors to the glass roof. Look closely and it is bicycle frames, chains and sprockets, welded into a trunk and branches with birds perched in them. It sets the tone. Almost everything decorative at Colombo Court began its life as something else, and that was a decision rather than an accident.
Why recycled art
When the old office buildings were converted, the brief was to waste as little as possible. That applied to the bricks and the timber, and it applied to the art. Rather than buy new pieces, the owners commissioned Sri Lankan makers to work with what could be found: scrap metal from garages, old bicycle parts, fishing hooks, cement mixers, tractor seats, railway sleepers and waste paper. The results are not compromises. They are the most photographed things in the hotel.
The makers
The sculptor Prageeth Manohansa made the tree, the birds and the ferns from discarded metal. His ferns, in the darker corners of the garden, are welded from fishing hooks and car parts and are convincing enough that guests water them. Local craftspeople made the paper chandeliers and lampshades on the room floors, the paper chairs in the library and the waxed-paper chairs on the roof, which survive the monsoon better than most timber.
Three pieces to look for
The fountain in the private courtyard was a cement mixer left behind by the builders. The bar stools in The Loft are tractor seats. The bedside lamps in every room stand on bicycle parts, which is the piece most guests only notice on the second night.
What it is for
It is not a style. It is a way of behaving that happens to look good. Every piece that was made from waste is a piece that was not made from new material, which is a small part of why Colombo Court became South Asia’s first CarbonNeutral® city hotel. And it supports the makers, who are still working in Colombo and still finding things in scrapyards. If you would like the full story, from the offices to the hotel, it is here.
