• The Founder of Paradise Road opens up about art collecting, hospitality, design, and the personal philosophy behind his new Rizzoli-published monograph

For nearly four decades, Udayshanth Fernando has quietly shaped the visual language of contemporary Sri Lankan lifestyle and hospitality. 

Through Paradise Road, he introduced a design sensibility that felt restrained, monochromatic, and globally aware at a time when much of the local market leant heavily ornamental. From hotels and galleries to batik, retail, interiors, and art collecting, his influence has extended across multiple creative disciplines.

Now, that journey has been brought together in ‘Udayshanth Fernando: Living Design,’ a definitive monograph published by Rizzoli International. The book focuses on Fernando’s personal art collection – one of the largest in Sri Lanka – while also tracing his work across hospitality, interiors, retail, and art. 

Marking the launch of the ‘Udayshanth Fernando: Living Design,’ the Udayshanth and Angelika Fernando Foundation also presented a limited-time-only exhibition showing works from his collection which appear within the book itself.

For Fernando, the project feels deeply personal. “Every picture tells a story, and this book holds within it a curated selection of my designs, beloved works from my collection, and spaces from my home, all reflecting my personal aesthetic,” he said in the official release.

Yet ‘Living Design’ is not simply a retrospective. It also functions as a wider reflection on taste, collecting, and the ways design shapes everyday life.

A style that changed the local landscape

Fernando’s story with Paradise Road began after years spent overseas working in hospitality. He left Sri Lanka young, studying and working across Europe, New Zealand, and Australia before eventually returning in 1987. “I never intended to come back,” he admitted. “But when I started to come back, I felt that I belonged here.”

That return coincided with the beginnings of Paradise Road, which started with a clear aesthetic point of view that sharply differed from what existed locally at the time. “They had an established taste then that was quite restricted. I came in with a monochrome taste, black and white essentially, and that got established,” Fernando explained. “Today it’s renowned all over the world.”

Over time, that aesthetic evolved into something immediately recognisable. Fernando still personally oversees almost every design and retail decision connected to the brand. “Everything in Paradise Road is chosen by me. No product is sold at Paradise Road without my signature,” he said. “I don’t delegate design or product purchasing to anybody. I select it myself.”

That consistency has helped establish Paradise Road as a unique and instantly recognisable lifestyle identity. And this identity carries through every aspect of the Paradise Road experience. 

His approach extended into textiles too. Fernando recalled experimenting with geometric forms in batik at a time when the medium was still dominated by more traditional motifs. “I went geometric with batik instead of the swirls and curls everybody used.”

That instinctive eye for form and restraint eventually found expression across some of Colombo’s most recognisable hospitality spaces, including Paradise Road Tintagel Colombo and Paradise Road The Gallery Café. The latter remains especially significant, housed within the former office space of Geoffrey Bawa.

“Bawa had so much faith in me that he entrusted his beloved space,” Fernando said. He added that he had made a commitment to maintain a gallery there in Bawa’s honour, something he continues through the Paradise Road Galleries.

Collecting, fostering and living with art

If Paradise Road shaped Fernando’s public identity, art collecting shaped the private one.

‘Living Design’ reveals part of that world through works drawn from Fernando’s personal collection, which spans more than a thousand pieces and includes modern Sri Lankan masters alongside contemporary regional artists. “I’m passionate about art. Obsessed. I always have been,” he said candidly.

His connection to art stretches back to childhood. “I got the art prize every year for 10 years right through my school career,” he recalled. “As time went on, my life became the canvas and I stopped painting.”

Instead, he began collecting. Among the works closest to him is a 1930 painting by George Keyt, which he describes as a masterpiece. His first acquisition, however, was a work by Laki Senanayake purchased in 1970.

“I collect art that I relate to,” Fernando explained. “Art is very subjective. If it appeals to me and my taste, then I acquire it.” This ethos is part of why he is so drawn to local and regional artists – both as a collector and as a patron. 

That philosophy also informs the advice he gives new collectors. “Follow your instincts,” he said. “You must buy art that you relate to because when you are seeing art that you can identify yourself with, or that you can live with, you have to work out how and where you’re going to use it, and how it is going to enhance your space and life. Because that is what art is meant for – enhancing your life.”

Fernando’s relationship with art extends far beyond collecting. Over the last 28 years, Paradise Road Galleries has become one of the country’s most important platforms for contemporary Sri Lankan artists, while also introducing regional South Asian artists to local audiences.

“I’ve created platforms for up-and-coming artists in Sri Lanka,” he said. “Most of the reputed artists in Sri Lanka have been exhibited by me.”

Fernando has also played a part in discovering renowned regional artists. He recalled discovering Pakistani artist Ali Kazim at an art camp and later giving him his first solo show, an opportunity the artist hadn’t yet been able to find in his home country at the time. “Today he’s hanging in art galleries like Tate in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York,” Fernando said. “Those are the joys in what I’m doing.”

He also pointed to the lack of major public galleries in Sri Lanka as part of what drove him to continue collecting and exhibiting. “Unfortunately in Sri Lanka, there are not enough national galleries people can visit to see original works of art.”

A family project and a personal legacy

Although ‘Living Design’ centres on Fernando’s life and work, the project itself emerged through family collaboration. 

Today, Fernando’s daughters have each evolved their own distinct sense of taste from the creative world he built around them. 

Annika Fernando now leads the interiors and retail space through her interior design studio and retail concept store PR, while Saskia Fernando has become one of the country’s most influential contemporary art figures through Saskia Fernando Gallery and the Udayshanth and Angelika Fernando Foundation, carrying forward her father’s long-standing commitment to fostering regional and local artistic talent.

The monograph was largely curated by his daughter, Saskia, alongside his other daughter Annika and a wider creative team. “My daughter Saskia actually wanted to produce this book as a tribute,” Fernando said. “She curated the book, we had a great photographer in Sebastian Posingis who took the photos, and there were others, like Maryam Begum and Harshi Hewage who put in a lot of work and saw the book being published from beginning to end. 

The publication also features photography by Dominic Sansoni, alongside essays by international cultural voices including Sean Anderson, Sonal Singh, and Bandana Tewari. Printed in Italy and published by Rizzoli, the book marks a rare moment of international recognition for a Sri Lankan creative figure working across design and hospitality.

Fernando admitted the experience still felt surreal. “I’m so flattered about the book. I’m excited about it, and it’s a wonderful feeling to see what you’ve done, your talent and your creativity, being published.”

For someone who spent decades carefully curating physical spaces, ‘Living Design’ also becomes a way of preserving something less tangible. Taste. Instinct. Atmosphere. The small details that turn a room, gallery, hotel, or store into something memorable.

And while the monograph looks back on nearly 40 years of work, Fernando already sees it as the beginning of something larger. “This book is the first,” he said. “Perhaps there will be one to follow on my whole art collection.”