From left: CSACL Director/CEO Architect Asoka Widanapathirana, CSACL Director Architect Jayantha Perera and CSACL Head of School Architect Lal Balasuriya
Pic by Pradeep Pathirana 

By Zahara Zuhair
City School of Architecture (CSA) Director architect Jayantha Perera at a press conference held to announce its 30-year celebration said that an electronic submission system should be introduced to Sri Lanka in order to expedite the plan passing process for building approval.

“The World Bank (WB) was here to support this process. So I told them if you are funding please fund for an electronic submission system, which is done in Singapore,” he said.
In return, he said that the WB officials queried from him whether the Sri Lankan engineers, architects are ready to take it.

“There was an American, a German and a Moroccan. I asked them how long it takes to get a passport in your country. The American said one week, the German said four days, Moroccan said one month. And I said in Sri Lanka it takes just four hours, we are geared to have it,” he said.

“Somebody must put the system in to place, then it will work. This electrical submission system has to come to this country if this needs to be sorted out,” Perera stressed.
Talking about CSA, he emphasized that the final goal of this institute is to be the best school for architects in South Asian region.To commemorate 30 years, CSA has planned a series of events. They will organizing an open-day exhibition on 5th and 6th November. 

They also will be issuing a special magazine during the same month.Perera said that CSA formerly known as the Colombo School of Architecture was initially started as a lecture series by the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (SLIA) in 1986. CSA which entered a strategic partnership with the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, United Kingdom, is the only private architectural education provider in Sri Lanka, recognized by SLIA and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), London.

Referring to the future trends, CSACL Director/CEO Architect Asoka Widanapathirana stated that the school has ambitious plans to transform the field of architectural education even further preferably in the fields of post-graduate study programmes related to the profession.