Danish modernist architect who early in his career (1957) moved to Sri Lanka. to work in the office of Minette de Silva. While in Colombo, Plesner met Geoffrey Bawa, and a productive partnership was born. Between 1959-1965 Plesner and Bawa were almost inseparable. Plesner grew up with the Scandinavian Modernism of the early 1950's, which valued simple abstract functionalism and honest use of natural materials.
The completed excavations of the 6th-century palace of the Umayyad sultans of Jerusalem have been preserved as an archaeological garden. In the palace courtyard a new structure offers a shady place from which to contemplate 'the pleasure of ruins'. Its form is inspired by the stone shade pavilion next to the Dome of the Rock, but it is built as a laser-cut steel structure of two-inch pipes strengthened by flat steel flanges that widen and narrow according to the bending moments, in the process taking on forms reminiscent of Islamic decorative motifs.
