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 21st 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 13th 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.
