Gihan Karunaratne

Invited design studio critic

2012 – Present; offering professional feedback to Architecture and Interior Design students at HE institutions: 

• University of Cambridge, Department of Architecture, Year 2, Final Crit - Guest Critic.
• Architectural Association, Department of Architecture, Year 2 & 3, Final Crit - Guest Critic.
• University of Sheffield, Department of Architecture, MA Architecture, Final Crit - Guest Critic.
• KU Leuven, Belgium, Department of Architecture, MA Final Crit, Guest Critic / External Examiner.
• University of Kent, Department of Architecture, Year 2 & 3, Final Crit - Guest Critic.
• Oxford Brookes University, Department of Architecture, Year 2 & 3, Final Crit - Guest Critic.
• University of Westminster, Department of 3D Design, Year 2, Final Crit - Guest Critic.

Guest presentations and lectures

• Displaced Urbanism, Research Book launch & Symposium at Cambridge University (February 2026)
• Resilient Urbanism, Research Book launch & Symposium at University College London (UCL) (November 2025)
• Resilient Urbanism, Research Book launch & Symposium at Royal College of Arts (RCA) (November 2025)
• Informal Settlements of the Global South, Research Lecture, Lecture presentations at GSD Harvard University (November 2024)
• Mapping: Lecture presentation at Manchester School of Architecture (October 2024).
• Informal Settlements of the Global South, Book Launch and Symposium: Lecture presentations at University College London (UCL), The Bartlett Development Planning Unit (May 2024).
• Informal Settlements of the Global South, Book Launch and Symposium: Lecture presentations at the Royal College of Art (RCA), Architecture PHD (February 2024).
• Informal Settlements of the Global South, Book Launch and Symposium: Lecture presentations at the University of Cambridge, Department of Architecture (February 2024).
• Informal Pockets, Colombo, Sri Lanka, Lecture presentations at the University of Cambridge, Department of Architecture (February 2024).
• Informal Settlements of the Global South, Book Launch and Symposium: Lecture presentations at the University of Sheffield, Department of Architecture (October 2023).
• Informal Settlements: Lecture presentations at Kingston University, Research and Sustainable Fashion Department (March 2023).
• Informal Settlements: Lecture presentations at the University of Coventry, Department of Architecture (February 2023).
• Informal settlements, Colombo, Sri Lanka, Lecture presentations at the University of Sheffield, Department of Architecture (February 2017).
• Mapping: Lecture presentations at Shandong Jianzhu University, China, Department of Architecture (June 2013).
• Ethereal Mapping: Lecture presentations at the Goethe Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka (June 2014).

Membership of professional bodies

• Royal Institute of British Architects, Chartered Architect (2005)
• Architects Registration Board, Registered Architect (2005)
• Royal Society of Arts, Fellow (2016)

Courses taught

• Interior Design MA

Current research

• Despite census data showing Sri Lanka’s urban population below 20 per cent, urbanisation is widely underestimated due to administrative definitions. Urban life is spreading without migration, as services reach rural areas and people gradually adopt urban lifestyles. This “hidden” in-situ urbanisation has mixed effects on governance, planning, and everyday life. Framed by Henri Lefebvre’s Urban Revolution, this research paper examines people transitioning between rural and urban conditions, drawing on field observations and narratives to reveal urbanism as a lived process overlooked by official statistics and surveys.
• Colombo evolved from a 15th-century Moorish seaport into Sri Lanka’s colonial capital through Portuguese, Dutch, British, and local interventions. Over five centuries, it expanded to nearly 100 km² by reclaiming wetlands and agricultural land. The relocation of parliament to Kotte in the 1980s accelerated urbanisation, causing floods and ecological stress. Once seen as wastelands, wetlands gained value for ecosystem services, earning Colombo the Ramsar Wetland City Award in 2018. Yet visions like “Aquarian” mask tensions of social justice, displacement, and contested urban development. This research will reveal the ongoing complementing and contesting relationships among the natural setting, the community, political authority, and scholarly discourse.
• Sri Lanka is experiencing in-situ urbanisation, where rural populations adopt urban lifestyles beyond official statistics. Around Colombo, a new lower-middle class dependent on the service sector faces socio-economic precarity, particularly in housing, as policy favours the poor and the affluent. This research examines their spatial practices in Colombo’s suburbs through the lens of liminal urbanism. Using ethnography and spatial analysis, it shows how residents adapt homes, shared spaces, and informal economies to negotiate constraints, build resilience, and maintain a sense of belonging and identity amid redevelopment pressures.
• Outside the baselines: Mapping hidden stories in the Postcolonial Colombo. In collaboration with the Planning Department at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, this joint academic research will result in a peer-reviewed scholarly publication, Displaced Urbanism, slated for publication in June 2025. This research paper uses radical mapping to uncover personal narratives within Colombo’s lived spaces. Treating maps as subjective socio-spatial texts, it traces how colonial and postcolonial transformations shaped the city’s landscapes. Historical and ethnographic insights reveal obscured urban experiences, advocating creative mapping to challenge enduring colonial geographies.
• Urban Pockets, Gentrification and Transformation, Challenged Communities, Colombo. Joint academic research with the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, Planning Department. The outcome will be a scholarly, peer-reviewed publication titled ‘Displaced Urbanism’, scheduled for publication in June 2025.
• Finding Resilience through Nocturnal Urbanism. Joint academic empirical research with the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, Planning Department. The case of Kimbulawala on the periphery of the City of Colombo—presented in the study through a series of narratives of the inhabitants of the place, the urban planners and officials of governing institutions, as well as the author’s on-site observations—provides a classic example of a synergy of different facets of resilience. The outcome will be an academic, peer-reviewed publication titled ‘Resilient Urbanism’, scheduled for publication in June 2025.
• The Invisible beyond Visible: The Perils of Urban Regeneration in Colombo’s Slave Island is collaborative research with the University of Moratuwa’s Architecture and Planning Department and the University of Sheffield’s Urban Design Department. Empirical research was published in June 2023 by Routledge – Informal Settlements of the Global South.
• Sustainable Practices Improvisatory Assemblies: documentation and comparison of low-means building practices in Canada and England. Partnership with Toronto Metropolitan University 

Publications

Academic peer-reviewed edited books

1. (ed) Informal Settlements of the Global South. 2023. Routledge
2. (ed) Resilient Urbanism. Routledge. 2025.
3. (ed) Displaced Urbanism. Routledge. 2025
4. (ed) Mapping. Routledge. (Currently Under Production) December 2025.
5. (ed) Film & Urbanism. Routledge. (Currently Under Production) Late 2026.
6. (ed) Transitory Urbanism. Routledge. (Currently Under Production) Late 2026.
7. (ed) Improvised Urbanism. Routledge. (Currently Under Production) Early 2027.
8. (ed) Liminal Urbanism. Routledge. (Currently Book Proposal Stage)
9. (ed) Climate Urbanism. Routledge. (Currently Book Proposal Stage) 

Peer-reviewed chapters

1. (Lead author) ‘The Invisible beyond Visible: The Perils of Urban Regeneration in Colombo’s Slave Island.’ With Prof. Jagath Munasinghe & Dr Tanzil Shafique. In (ed.) Karunaratne, Informal Settlements of the Global South. 2023. Routledge.
2. (Lead author) ‘Displaced in situ: The communities left behind in Colombo’s Urban Transformation’. With Prof. Jagath Munasinghe & Dr Tanzil Shafique. In (ed) Karunaratne, Displaced Urbanism. Routledge. April 2025.
3. (Lead author) ‘Nocturnal Urbanism: The Case of Kimbulawala Food Street’. With Wasana G.K. Withana (University of Colombo, Sri Lanka), Prof. Jagath Munasinghe (Department of Town & Country Planning, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka) & Dr Tanzil Shafique (University of Sheffield). In (ed.) Resilient Urbanism. Routledge. May 2025.
4. Outside the baselines: Mapping hidden stories in the Postcolonial Colombo. Gihan Karunaratne, Prof. Jagath Munasinghe (University of Moratuwa) and Dr Youcao Ren (Sheffield University)  

Peer-reviewed academic journals

1. (ed) ‘Resilient Urbanism’ in Bhumi, The Planning Journal, Vol. 10, Issue 1. 2023;
2. (ed) ‘Displaced Urbanism’ in Bhumi, The Planning Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 1, 2022;

Non-refereed articles

1. ‘Civic Architecture in The Age of Transition’ in C3 Magazine, C3 no.417 (2022 #1/6)
2. ‘Visitor Centres: Almost, Yet More Than, Being There’ in C3 Magazine, C3 no.413 (2021 #3/6);
3. (ed) The Architect, Reboot, The Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (SLIA), 02/2021
4. ‘Collaborative and didactic: Urban learning landscapes’ in C3 Magazine, C3 no.406 (2020 #2/6);
5. ‘Village within a city. Civic spaces, civic dimensions’ in C3 Magazine, C3 no.403 (2019 #5/6);
6. ‘Palimpsest: Architectural insertions, continuity, and change’ in C3 Magazine, C3 no.401 (2019 #3/6);
7. ‘Disappearing Urban Communities’ in Urban Design, 150, Spring 2019;
8. ‘Power of Architecture, Pride of Place and Strength in Community’ in C3 Magazine, C3 no.395
9. ‘Bubble and Squeak: Non-solid state – ephemeral tangible structures’ in C3 Magazine, C3 no.392 (2017 #6/6);
10. ‘Preserving Slave Island’ in Urban Design, 143, Spring 2017;
11. ‘Pavilion Morphology – Space between the Materials’ in C3 Magazine, C3 no.388 (2017 #2/6);
12. ‘New Indian Identities and Architectural Tectonics’, in C3 Magazine, C3 no.385 (2016 #9/10);
13. Guest Editor, The Architect, January/March Issue 2016. The Journal of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects.
14. Guest editor, The Architect, July/September Issue 2015, Vol 116, Issue 3. The Journal of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects.
15. ‘Herstories’ in The Architect, April/June 2015, Vol 116, Issue 2. The Journal of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects.

Correspondents and contributors

1. C3 Zine Architecture Publication (2017 – Present)

Academic peer reviewer

1. Springer Nature (December 2024 – Present)

National/international exhibitions

1. Royal Academy Summer/Winter Exhibition, 2020 Artwork (Grenfell).
2. Colomboscope 2016 ‘Testing Grounds’, Artwork: Hidden.
3. 3rd Colombo Art Biennale 2014 ‘Making History’, Artwork: Ethereal Mapping.
4. Artwork selected for Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2012, Artwork: Free Parker Pen with every enquiry.
5. Artwork selected for Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2011, Artwork: Mapping.
6. Artwork selected for the 4th International Rotterdam Architecture Biennale 2009 ‘Squat City – Urban Inform’, Artwork: Mapping.
7. Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2004, Artwork: Illicit Pleasure.
8. Royal College of Art Show 2002, Artwork: Illicit Pleasure.
9. Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1999, Artwork: Projected Space.

2015/16, Director of the architecture element of the Colombo Art Biennale 2016 (CAB2016).  

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1999, Artwork: Projected Space. Bovis and the Architecture Journal Architecture Award.