People

Sepala Molligoda was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), in 1931 and attended the University of Sheffield, UK, graduating with a BArch. degree in the early 1950s. He appears to have remained in the UK until 1957, when he is recorded as a passenger travelling to Colombo, from Southampton. By 1959 he had joined the Public Works Department in Colombo, where he was employed as an Assistant Architect in the Building Division. Out of a total of eight Assistant Architects within the Division, four had been previously dispatched to London to take the postgraduate course run by the Architectural Association’s Department of Tropical Studies, in London. Molligoda was no exception and he was permitted leave to study there in the 1962-63 iteration of the course. Following his graduation, he returned to his role as Assistant Architect and was to remain for much of his subsequent career within public service, eventually rising to become Chief Architect within the Division, by 1980. This promotion was followed by an appointment in the early 1990s as Deputy Director for the Central and Southern Province, within the Special Works section of the Buildings Division – a role he would repeat, as Deputy Director for the Central Province between 1997-1999. From the late 1990s, Molligoda also ran his own practice, based in Nagpur. Molligoda also served as the Honorary Treasurer of the Government Architects’ Association in the 1960s and President of the Ceylon Institute of Architects from 1969-70. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects in 2013.

Sources

Architectural Association Council Minutes, 13th February, 1963. AA Archives
The National Archives, England; BT27 Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and Successors: Outwards Passenger Lists; Reference Number: Series BT27-
Architectural Association Journal, 78, no. 871 (April 1963), pp.27, 312–13
Ferguson’s Ceylon Directory, 1959, The Ceylon Observer Press, 1959, p.237
Ferguson’s Ceylon Directory, 1963, The Ceylon Observer Press, 1963, p.1012
Ferguson’s Ceylon Directory, 1992-93, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon, 1992-1993, p.158
Ferguson’s Ceylon Directory, 1997-99, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon, 1997-1999, p.100