Minnette de Silva, the first woman architect from Sri Lanka and the first Asian woman to be elected an associate of the RIBA, was almost forgotten by architectural history until recently. Unlike her Western counterparts, such as Jane Drew, after whom the British Women in Architecture award is named and with whom she was friends, de Silva was exoticised and erased for a long time.

De Silva put together an eclectic autobiography in the form of a book, The Life and Work of an Asian Woman Architect (1998). A new architectural monograph on de Silva, Minnette de Silva: Intersections by Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, brings fresh insight into this remarkable woman. Siddiqi, an assistant professor of architecture at Barnard College, Columbia University, focuses on African and South Asian historicity, archival studies, and feminist and colonial practices.

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