A Tribute to Perween Rehman alias PR (1957 to 2013)

Text: Asiya Sadiq Polack

As I pen my thoughts today, to say a few words of tribute for our beloved teacher, friend and fellow architect Perween Rehman. I wish that, these were to be spoken to applaud her in person and not to laud her when she is no longer with us. It is our misfortune that, the “extra ordinaries” amongst us, carries on performing so silently, that, we are only jolted from the “ordinary”, when they are no more.

However, PR rises above the cliché, because she with her vision and professional choices became immortal in life and death through her work. By choosing the ordinary and the poor of the society as her clients, she and her colleagues achieved the extraordinary in the 21^st century spatial and social milieu, both nationally and internationally.

A remarkable architect and an honorable citizen of this country, PR’s premature death and assassination on 13^th March 2013, while conducting her professional work, is a personal, national and universal loss. She literally gave her life, living and dead to this city and country. Taken away brutally, she leaves behind a huge legacy of a socially responsive architecture both in theory and practice, achieved over three decades.

Perween’s architectural practice was unconventional, out of the box and ground breaking. She had a detail oriented creative thinking process which she chose to apply to a development project. She was a meticulous designer, documenter, manager, trainer, teacher, thinker, researcher, activist and a great human rolled in to one.