THEME 2012 - RESIDENCES OF PAKISTAN

Shells and doorknobs, closets and attics, old towers and peasant huts are pleasant memories of our childhood…..or are they memories of “the home”. As per  Bachelard (in his book Poetics of Space) admits that every house is first a geometrical object of planes and right angles, but ask his reader to ponder how such rectilinearity so welcomes human complexity, idiosyncrasy and how the house adapts to its inhabitants.

How does the body, not merely the mind remember the feel of the latch in a long-forsaken childhood home? If the house is the first universe for its young children, the first cosmos, how does its space shape all subsequent knowledge of other space, of any larger cosmos? Is a house “a group of organic habits” or even something deeper, the shelter of the imagination itself?

As we listen to the geometry of built spaces, the echoes dignifying and distinguishing every old house, every experienced house, the probe is the impact of human habitation on geometrical forms, and the impact of the form upon human inhabitants.

So how do we sum it; a house is a nest for dreaming, a shelter for imagining or is always a container, sometimes contained, the house serves as the portal to metaphors and imagination. From time immemorial hoses have had a mystifying curious appeal, each into his own, especially when architects try to define a house, an abode a shelter

-          “A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.”

-            All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the person in that space.

-          "The house is a machine for living in." (Vers une architecture, 1923)

-          Houses are built to live in, not to look on; therefore, let use be preferred before uniformity, except where both may be had. Francis Bacon, Essays of Buildings

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-          "The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." Frank Lloyd Wight New York Times Magazine (4 Oct. 1953).

-          I believe that architects should design gardens to be used, as much as the houses they build, to develop a sense of beauty and the taste and inclination toward the fine arts and other spiritual values.  Luis Barragan

-           These cities of 20 million and 30 million people, with densities of thousands of families per acre, they require new inventions to humanize that mega-scale, to find a way in which, though we live densely and though we live one on top of each other, we still want nature, and we still want sunlight and we still want the garden, and we still want all the qualities that make a place humane. And that's our responsibility. Moshie Safdie

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EXAMINING DIVERSE VIEWPOINTS: FOUR ARTISTS FROM SINDH

Text: Marjorie Husain

Photography: Courtesy

Looking at the work in exhibition of artists such as Hussain Chandio, Jam Depar, Manzoor Solangi and Nusrat Raza Mangi, one was reminded of the fascinating cultural history and traditions of Sindh; its arts and crafts created through the centuries by gifted artistes and artisans. The fifty-seven exhibits recently displayed in Karachi, encompassed the disciplines of sculpture, figurative work, landscape and modern miniature art. Each series carried themes of the individual artists to be examined in detail. Yet there remains still so much to be written about the province of Sindh. There is so much to discover of the Indus Valley Civilization and the inhabitants of the region 5000 years ago. We know they enjoyed wearing decorative ornaments made from coloured stones; lived in well designed homes and streets, and were buried without weapons. One realizes how very culturally advanced these early inhabitants must have been. When the markings on the seals discovered are deciphered, one may learn so much more.

In Pakistan the first official centre of art education began in Sindh in 1970, when A.R.Nagori established the Fine Arts Department of the Sindh University. He was joined by Mussarat Mirza and several talented artists began their art education at the university. In recent times it is Muhammad Ali Bhatti who heads the department following the principle of educating future generations.

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Varying Art Assessment Standards in an Era Where “Anything Goes”

Text: Seyhr Qayum

Scholars, critics, your regular run-of-the-mill Average Joe – everybody, has at one point or another asked the incredibly profound and simultaneously incredibly futile question: “What is Art?” Countless articles have been published proclaiming art to be the visual representation of deep, intellectual thought. Some say it’s something – anything, which elicits an emotional response from the viewer. Many ramble tirelessly about how it’s all encompassing and is entirely subjective; what could seem like the consequence of a knocked over tub of paint on some canvas that conveniently happened to be lying beside the tub, for some people, could prompt others to empty out their bank accounts. By virtue of the fact that “art” has an even vaguer globally accepted, dictionary definition than it did say five hundred years ago, it is impossible to satisfactorily,universally answer this question. I personally believe that there is indeed, no right or wrong, no good or bad – to me, art is whatever induces one to stop, look at something, really look at it, and think “wow.”

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