Kanishka Perera
Kanishka is an architect and interior designer with over 20 years of experience in the design and construction industry. He was based in the UK for 15 years before moving to Sri Lanka in 2013. He founded Pollen the following year.
He is a passionate designer and loves a design challenge regardless of what it may be. He is well known for his collaborative attitude, ability to listen and build consensus within a team of designers. While in the UK he has worked on a select number of award winning projects. His unique sense of design focuses more on attention to detail rather than a use of archetypical forms, resulting in a diverse yet beautiful collection of projects.
Kanishka believes that education is a key part of design process both for students as well as for educators. He has over the years been a visiting guest critic for London Metropolitan University, Canterbury School of Architecture, University of East London in the UK and Academy of Design in Colombo. Kanishka is a chartered architect registered both in the UK and Sri Lanka.
The Collective
The collective refers to our collaborators. We have strong ties with them and often work together on larger and more complex projects or simply so that we can have a richer design solution.
Our collaborators often contribute to our work even when they don’t directly work on a project, simply because we share knowledge and seek advice from each other, thus creating a very dynamic network of highly experienced professionals.
Kesara Ratnavibhushana
Kesara Ratnavibhushana is a multidisciplinary artist, photographer & creative consultant. Currently based in Sri Lanka, his work as photographer-in-residence at the Shunt collective in London forged an intensely personal reportage style to photographic projects, specialising in architecture, fashion & select weddings internationally.
His work includes Unfolding Tesseract presented in Dubai, London and Capri, shoots for Rolex SA, collaborations with Parisian duo French Cowboy and curation of Sri Lanka’s first NFT exhibition The Brilliant Resilient.
His keen visual sense, fondness for all things art as well as lateral thinking make him a strong sounding board and contributor to the design process.
Surindu Basnayaka
With over 20 years in the industry, Surindu has been involved in a very diverse range of projects over his career. He has over the years, led design teams across various sectors on complex projects of various scales. His experience spans from residential to airports to healthcare and heritage/ conservation.
Bringing a design to life during the actual construction and fabrication process is what really excites Surindu. His ability to understand the aspiration of the design along with the capability of the builder has been invaluable in the execution of many of the projects he has worked on. His foresight of how things are often executed along with how best to achieve robustness in design is rare in the industry.
Surindu is a chartered architect registered in Sri Lanka. As a senior member of the SLIA council for many years, he has also invested much of his time towards advancing the profession in Sri Lanka.
Shevy Basnayaka
Shevy has over 20 years of experience in the design and construction industry which includes many years practicing in the UK. Having worked across multiple sectors spanning from residential to commercial and from new build to renovation.
She has a unique sense of design alongside a tireless sense of commitment to delivering a clients aspirations on projects which are often complex and time consuming.
Her commitment to moving the profession forward is evident in her many years of dedication to the RIBA chapter in Sri Lanka where she has been an office bearer numerous times. She has a very particular point of view about our responsibility as designers to achieve design excellence, as well as educating both clients and the industry at large with the aim of helping to develop a local design and construction industry that is often perceived as lagging behind the developed world.