Mohamed Camal

Mahajana is a Singhalese collective term meaning for the people. Mahajana LK is a new Sri Lankan Political Party and Civic Organization created as a result of Sri Lanka’s current situation and Civic Resistance movements. We aim to be a civilian voice and we see opportunities to now engage in processes of dispersed collective citizen agency and collaboration with Sri Lanka’s global diaspora.

We are fed up with decades of political and economic mismanagement! Corruption is seen throughout government and in all major positions and parties. Our government has bankrupted our country and we as people now have to survive with long power cuts and lack of essential amenities. The people demand change and the divide between the citizens and government is bigger than ever before.

This year we’ve organized and seen large scale protests and demonstrations which were largely peaceful, demonstrative, educational and community building but when met with military retaliation turned violent and became an unsafe space for Sri Lankan citizens.

Mahajana is a foreign aid project that is an educational, community and makerspace that facilitates co-creation, independent media, and skill building. Mahajana focuses on training and making as direct avenues for relationship building, peer learning and spaces for strategic planning.

The project looks at long term sustainable foreign aid rather than short term financial support and aims to facilitate the growth of Mahajana LK and allows for the growth of a collective civilian voice by connecting Mahajana LK and Australia’s Sri Lankan Diaspora.

Mahajana’s program consists of Meeting rooms and conference spaces, offices as well as multi-use co-creation and learning labs to the north of the site. A makerspace focusing on additive manufacturing, renewable energies and future transport and a communal kitchen and dining area as well as a communal library to the south of the site. In between the two forms there is a stepped people’s assembly space where we’ll organize monthly citizen assemblies which will be also live streamed on our website. And this bleeds out to the east to allow for more informal spaces of activity, connection and gathering.

Structurally the built form is constructed using engineered timber columns and beams arranged around a radial grid. The last part of the structure are these roof beams / trusses that hold up the ripple like 3D printed prefabricated modular roof.

The fluctuations of the roof inform the program and spaces created below. It rhythmically delineates divisions in space dropping down to create smaller more confined environments and opens up to large double height areas with ample light and purposely allowing for the use of specialty equipment and machinery.

A major part of the project is the construction of the central stepped landscape which digs below ground level. This excavated earth will be repurposed on site as a series rammed earth walls on the northern façade of the project (due to the materials high thermal mass) as well as becoming the seating for the stepped landscape itself.

Long term, Mahajana is the first of a series of architectural projects that facilitates dispersed collective agency and collaboration. Where the long-term future of Sri Lanka will be shaped through citizen input harnessing the collaborative opportunities and potentials of skilled and committed members of Sri Lanka’s global diaspora.