Shiromi Pinto

Plastic Emotions is an imagining of the life of Minnette de Silva, the first Sri Lankan woman to become an architect, the first Asian woman to be elected as an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the woman who helped to remould the built landscape of a newly independent Sri Lanka with her daringly modern designs.

Shiromi Pinto has woven a narrative that mingles fact with fiction to shine a light on this almost forgotten woman. It's a beautiful novel, full of rich description and insightful observation, that reveals something of what it was to be de Silva. She was a risk taker, a fiercely independent woman working in a highly male-centric society, and she wanted to bring the traditional crafts of her nation into the modern world so that they would continue to have relevance.

The novel is an exploration of her life, with her friendship with Le Corbusier depicted in the language of a love affair and her existence as a London socialite, celebrated for her exoticism, juxtaposed with that of her architectural practice in Sri Lanka, where she was treated with suspicion because of her gender.

The title is a quote from Le Corbusier's "Towards a New Architecture" and refers to the ability of an architect to mould the emotions of those who experience his (or her) buildings through the forms and shapes it is composed of. De Silva, in marrying tradition with modernity, was seeking a new, more plastic language of architecture. Her work in Sri Lanka was ground breaking. Pinto's novel is a stepping stone towards re-establishing her contribution to modernism.

It's also a beautiful story. You don't need to know anything about the central characters or the world of architecture to appreciate the humanity of two people who love each other but can't be together, or the life of a woman making her way in a man's world against a background of political upheaval.… (meer)