Showing posts with label Issue #22. Show all posts

Love, life and cinema……



Text: Maria Aslam

Photography: courtesy Naheed Mashooqullah Studio for Architecture & Design

Nothing deters the masses to watch a great movie that has had raving reviews, a stupendous box office opening or a steam roller caste……but for us Karachiites big movie or not watching movies is a great way of getting away from the daily works and stresses, the sudden play of city coming to a halt, the ever changing political scenario, the hide and seek of power fluctuations……….. all of this can be best taken care off by going to the cinemas.

A great cinema experience was a story of the bygone era when various cinema halls on the main artery of M. A Jinnah road competed with each other and then a long story of a society deadened in culture and art followed that naturally killed the art of filmmaking and cinema viewing as well.

Hence going to cinema and that also creatively designed with state of the art facilities is definitely a new entity to the recreation-starved city of Karachi. The cinemas have revived (hopefully) good film making and released a spirit of verve and enjoyment to the masses especially the youth of the society

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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 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.

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Searching -Through the Looking Glass



Text: Salwat Ali
Visuals: Courtesy Amin Gulgee Gallery

Stepping through the Looking Glass into Amin Gulgees Wonderland was a strangely familiar experience. A collision of the personal and the universal his medley of creative entanglements titled “Through the Looking Glass”, exhibited at his own gallery, centered on a reconfiguration of old works. The trick was to see them through a new lens. Mirrors have a great propensity to draw people into them physically and cognitively and Amin played creatively with mirror reflections, the see through look, peek – a - boo effects and gazing into infinity to transform familiar tales into new stories.

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