ADA: Architecture Design Art

Text | Anoushe Khan
Visuals | Courtesy AKPBS,P

Meet Garee Khan

The 52-year-old man from Aliabad, Hunza is the patriarch to a family of six. Along with his wife and three children, Mr. Khan lives in a semi-engineered stone laid house that has been under construction for the past seven years because of the family’s limited financial resources. For employment, he relies on farming and labour jobs that earn him a meager salary. To support the family, his teenaged daughter works as a housemaid in the neighbourhood. Combined the father-daughter duo earn just enough to cover basic household expenses such as food, school fees and medicine–that is primarily prescribed to treat waterborne diseases rooted in the consumption of contaminated water collected from open sources.

The Khan family’s dire situation is further exacerbated by the fact that their home had no sanitation infrastructure. They use a traditional pit latrine that is located adjacent to their partially fenced house. In addition to creating an unhygienic situation for the entire family, the female members of the Khan household have to wait until nightfall to relieve themselves. “A proper soakage pit costs approximately PKR 70,000 which I cannot not afford with the limited income I have,” said, Mr. Khan.

According to the United Nations Water-Glaas 2014 report, as the world turns its attention to the formulation of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) much remains to be done particularly to reduce inequalities across populations:

2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation;
1 billion people practice open defecation, nine out of ten in rural areas;
748 million people lack access to improved drinking-water and it is estimated that 1.8 billion people use a source of drinking-water that is fecally contaminated;
Hundreds of millions of people have no access to soap and water to wash their hands, preventing a basic act that would empower them to block the spread of disease.

Text | Sana Aslam
Visuals | Courtesy NADA

Project: Fatima Jinnah Park, Islamabad

Architect:
Nayyar Ali Dada                                 Principal Architect

Ghazanfar Ali                                      Architect

Raza Ali Dada                                     Architect

Nadeem Aslam                                    Resident Engineer

Hyder Ibrahim                                     Project Architect

Farheen Asim                                      Site Architect

Quratulain Kazami                              Architect

Saqib Bashir                                        Architect

Anjum Masood                                    Horticulturist

Client/Owner: Capital Development Authority CDA Islamabad

Consultants: Nayyar Ali Dada & Associates

Contractor: Expertise Pvt. Ltd.

Project completion: Phase 1 in 2006 & Phase II-IV in 2010

Areas: Total Park Area 760 acres

Islamabad a young city, conceived from its origin as the power seat of Pakistan, the capital city of the country that had acquired independence in 1947. The New Capital was decided in the year 1959, had from its start an ambitious, power induced; showcase to the world a major writ behind the project brief given to the assigned urban planner. A Greek firm of architects, Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis designed the master plan of the city based on a grid, which was triangular in shape with its apex towards the Margalla Hills.

A city nestled between the Margalla Hills, abounded with green forestation was laid out on a grid, that did not meander through the mountains and valleys but infact made inroads into the areas that has substantially grown as a concrete densified city which caters to Government bodies, Diplomatic enclaves and ancillary facilities today.

Islamabad has an impressive natural landscape and the views of hills form a comfortable and pleasant visual all around the city. There are some small parks dotted around the city, but Fatima Jinnah Park is the only place that caters for the community on an urban scale much suited to the city. During the rapid growth of the city with a concrete-jungle like approach, this park provides much relief as it acts as the lungs of the built city.

The Islamabad Park project overall concept addresses the need aimed at relief for a city developed only through buildings. First steps included removal of buildings construction from existing site and expected program and only essential forms were retained so as to maximize on the functions opportunities presented through natural landscape environmentally responsive and relevant master plan was created to blend necessary and inanities into a seemingly natural landscape.

RASHID ARSHED’S LETTER TO IMRAN

Dear Imran,

We had a brief talk when you called me early October. If I knew it was going to be our last conversation I would have extended it a bit longer. You told me you were not feeling well but you did not give me a clue that it was so serious. A week or so later, I made a few attempts to call you to find out how you were doing but without luck. Perhaps you were too busy preparing for your last journey.

On October 25, I received a shocking email from Karachi saying that your prognosis was not good. A few days later, another email carried the sad news. Understandably, Nighat, Jibran and Ken’an must have felt more pain, but your family extended far beyond your household. I want to tell you that a large circle of your friends and admirers in Pakistan and overseas are deeply hurt and miss you so much.

Your dear friend Dr. Sughra in Boston wrote these words to share her grief:

“I have been deeply saddened by Imran’s passing, and am writing to you as a fellow mourner. Imran meant a lot to most people fortunate enough to know him, including me. He has been a generous, loving, kind, encouraging, fun, and a completely loyal friend for over forty years and I miss him terribly.”

Text | Maria Aslam

Photography | Gary Otte, Janet Kimber & Maria Aslam

Building Facts

DESIGN

Architect: Maki and Associates, Tokyo

Architect of record: Moriyama and Teshima Architects, Toronto

Landscape architect: Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture, Lebanon

Museography: Studio Adrien Gardère, Paris

KEY FIGURES

The site: 6.8 hectares 

Museum gross floor area: 10,500 square metres

Size of galleries: 1,800 square metres

 Size of collections storage: 620 square metres

Seats in auditorium: 350 

Height of auditorium roof: 19.8 metres

Period from design to completion: 2004 to 2014

On the highway, short of Don Valley Parkway, a glimpse of the new addition of a Museum in Toronto is clearly visible. Situated away from the downtown area a major district of Museums and academia, itself is a statement and with such an iconic contemporary architecture amongst nondescript entities of sky-rises; it’s the distance and the distinction from its surroundings that reinforces its massive appeal in the design conundrums. In todays sprawling cityscapes the addition of any museum is distinctly urban and urbane specially Toronto; that boasts of a number of Museums equally designed by Star architects hence The Aga Khan Museum, the very first North America’s monument to Islamic art and founded by The Aga Khan renowned world over as an architecture aficionado, who was involved in the project from concept to materialization, it is known to all that His Highness himself selected the iridescent granite cubes that adorn the façade; is set to make a statement both in architecture and culture. The Museum a white gleaming Brazilian granite masterpiece adds to its distinction from its surroundings and creates an oasis of history, learning and entertainment; an oasis that once you enter, you leave the world behind.

With the lush gardens and the five reflective pools outside its front door and its inner-sanctum, open-air courtyard—entered from inside the building and ringed by walls of glass and wooden latticework so that light from outside projects dancing shadows into the museum over the course of the day—it is clear that this is a labour of love. But that is not all; The Ismaili Centre, Toronto is situated, together with the Aga Khan Museum, within a 6.8-hectare landscaped park, a new space for the public that showcases the work of three renowned architects. Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki designed the Aga Khan Museum, while Indian architect Charles Correa designed the Ismaili Centre and architect Vladimir Djurovic of Lebanon designed the Park, which features a formal garden. The Canadian firm Moriyama & Teshima are the architects for the entire project and responsible for integrating all aspects of the project.

Text: Yasmeen Lari
Visuals: Courtesy Heritage Foundation

In Pakistan, during the last couple of decades, recurring disasters have underscored the destructive impact of climate change on people’s lives. Their frequency and greater magnitude are attributed to changing weather patterns, melting glaciers, and deforestation, as well as increase in use of industrialized materials in construction that inflict avoidable ecological footprint. Due to the impact of changing climatic conditions, while centuries’ old archaeological sites and built heritage are rapidly turning into endangered sites, vernacular architecture is equally susceptible in the wake of floods and earthquakes.

Unsustainable post-disaster development leading to increased carbon footprint

Over centuries, vernacular construction in Pakistan has promoted social cohesion, fostering pride, stake and ownership through community participation and the use of local materials. These non-engineered methodologies, developed over centuries, are economical in construction and climatically highly suitable, warding off heat and cold.

Text: Zarminae Ansari
Visuals: Courtesy Zarminae Ansari & Port Grand Authorities

Karachi’s waterfront festival marketplace

The Port Grand Food and Entertainment Complex opened at the end of 2010, to much fanfare, inspiring great optimism in the midst of the violence that plagues the city. It was, and is, a rarity: an adaptive reuse project on a historic 1,400 ft bridge, creating a 200,000 square foot waterfront development in old Karachi. Known commonly as “netty jetty” (Native Jetty), the area of the Old Napier Mole Bridge was used to dump garbage, and was frequented by junkies. Shahid Firoz, the CEO of the project, intended the project to be a catalyst to “…revive the culture and traditions of old Karachi”[1]. Its much-photographed highlight is not just the view of Karachi Port and the occasional cargo train rattling past to the delight of children, but an awe-inspiring 150-year old Banyan tree skillfully lit at the entrance of Napier’s Tavern- an exclusive club-restaurant built using material from the old bridge.

The website of the project still uses the original 3D renderings rather than actual photographs of the built reality, which clearly express the original intent. Balloons, fireworks, and throngs of people: a “festival marketplace”. Indeed, many visitors to the development have pointed out the similarity to other famous waterfront marketplaces in North America, an idea that was most popular in the

Seventies and captured the imagination of town administrators as the great answer to revitalizing downtowns and waterfronts.

Case of the Lyari Expressway Project

Preamble

Text | Asiya Sadiq Polack & Suneela Ahmed

In developing contexts urban design is a word synonymous to elaborate public space design. Therefore the formally used terms in Pakistan shy away from the word design and prefer to use terms like; urban planning,

urban development and mega projects to describe any scale and form of urban design interventions. The nomenclature used by the city agencies and professionals is reflective of a mindset which absolves itself from

the pre-requisite study and design of urban projects addressing the social-political and spatial networks involved in the making of aesthetically designed urban projects.

These design questions are constantly discussed and debated in all studios and forums at the department of architecture (DAP) at NED University. One such study of the local urban design issues and their situation in

practice and teaching, was undertaken in a 04 year long Euro-Asian, EU funded inter universities collaborative research and teaching projects called Asia link and Asia Urbs City Design and Capacity Building

Projects. 06 cases (in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India) including the Lyari Expressway Project (LEW) in Karachi were studied to assess urban design practices and impacts in south Asia. Several staff

members / researchers, students and studios were involved in these investigations and the cases were discussed in-depth in international workshops, seminars and a joint conference in 2007 in Sri Lanka.

The published results of these activities are available at the DAP-NED archives.

One of the most important finding was that research by design on urban issues must be a continuous process conducted via research based design studios and practice fed into city policies and plans by professional

work and advocacy. To ensure this an Urban Research and Design Cell (URDC) was setup at DAP-NED in 2007, which engages regularly in city research and design projects and disseminates the analysis and
information via seminars, articles, consultancies and professional practice of its members.

Editorial

Infrastructure boggles ones mind, we are completely surrounded by it though invisible to our eyes and hence completely overlooked. Today more so our life styles are entirely embedded within a supporting network of technology
and its paraphernalia. Lets put technology aside for a second, can any building actually work without water, gas, electricity supplies or drain facilities? A unanimous no; so how can the design of such important parameters and life
sustaining elements be overlooked since all and every built structure however profound or mundane is sustained by the ever-growing network of services and facilities?

The work is not miniscule even if considered for one building or one family dwelling but is colossal and threatens to overpower the society. Once the infrastructure is laid below the grade level it is impossible to work, amend, or revisit the structure as it is not only phenomenally expensive but an impossible feat in removing the population inhabiting over and around it. Eventually the infrastructure over the years wears thin with the population advances and the demands of the now obsolete and stretched to it maximum layout of wires, cables, pipes and passageways.

Hence why then something of that dire almost life changing importance be ignored or considered ugly? The technological advances in the late twenty first century are immense; small chips can detect the surface and subliminal reading of the earth movement. We can therefore use technology to its maximum yet still the development or the design of infrastructure for the built environment is a task that the stakeholders and politicians of our country are wary to address. Newer urban or maybe rural developments in the scenario of the built environment include some aspects, but the productivity still lacks the demands of the current century.

Risk Free Schools in Pakistan – A Comprehensive School Safety Framework and Approach To Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)

Text: Anoushe Khan
Visuals: Courtesy FOCUS

School safety is a phenomenon dealing with policies and practices that lead to creation of a safe, secure and enabling learning environment within and outside a school building. Risk reduction in education emphasises on building a culture of resilience and safety through education, teacher training, training on school level risk assessments, building and retro-fitting school and finally strengthening disaster preparedness in education.
It is said that “earthquake doesn’t kill people -buildings do”. So how those buildings are designed and built, and where they are located, is critical to their ability to withstand different types
of natural hazard. Natural disasters have no borders, it could happen anywhere and anytime, but what is important is the wisdom & effective planning before undertaking any development
project. Multi-disciplinary skills are required to make a structure more aesthetic, attractive and cost-effective, however, one critical and fundamental element is always lacking and often ignored,
is how a structure could be made resilient to different types of natural hazards. Because our preference has been more focused on the aesthetic and architectural designs rather resiliency to any
disaster.

If the multi-disciplinary skills are utilized effectively keeping the element of risk reduction on priority, no doubt risk could be reduced and the ratio of causalities by the failure of structure can
reduce as well. The skills of architects, engineers, planners and surveyors can be collectively utilized to make such safe havens as part of a quality built environment opportunity.
Focus Humanitarian Assistance an affiliate of Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) has been active in Pakistan since 1998 and its Comprehensive School Safety framework is tailored for the geographies it serves and is unique for the institutional capacity it brings to bear. FOCUS plays its direct role in disaster preparedness and response at one hand side in the mountainous and coastal areas of Pakistan, and also its in-direct role for sensitizing community, stakeholders at other hand side, for getting conscious for site selection of infrastructures to be constructed and how to be safe within the existing buildings in emergencies. It has been involved in risk anticipation and identification of hazards through mapping and GIS based analysis. FOCUS Pakistan has been advocating legislation for school safety and implementing programmes for awareness and has been providing disaster response equipment to schools.

Text: Ar. Pervaiz Vandal

Education Fragmented- age of specialization

As compared to the earlier times education was now more focused on the abilities and techniques required to facilitate the production processes. An efficient education system with a defined curriculum, taught in time-bound packages, with grading and testing to assess employability of students was developed. Such an approach lends itself to a systematic break-up of education into modules, to be taught in a given time, students tested and evaluated and thus graded like industrial goods to be used according to the demand of the customer. Holistic education of the Renaissance was replaced with a specialized, short term, education. Knowledge was split into useful and profits generating sciences and the not so useful arts; ‘age of specialization’ was born. Among the many, a small number who could afford longer periods of education went onto further specialize and lead the developments in science.

Text: Ruqayya Rizwan
Photography: Ahmed Shajee Aijazi

Encountering space is a unique human experience. It amalgamates romanticism of art and literature, functionality and ergonomics of design and timelessness of brick and mortar. The experience itself engages maximum of our senses at the same time. For most part what we perceive as a visual treat is actually a sensory treat and therefore I can say with confidence if I entered a Rizwan Sadiq house with my eyes closed and ears shut I would be able to tell right away where I was, just like one can tell when one reaches home after a vacation.

Rizwan Sadiq is a contemporary architect. He finds his voice through the mechanics of building a space primarily through a plan. All credit due to his teachers and specially his mentor Tariq Hassan. A plan is the foundation of his houses. Elevation follows the plan. Everything else follows the plan and rightly so for you can live in a space that allows you flexibility and lets you grow as years pass by. If you ask Rizwan what is the strength of his plan he is likely to say his client’s lifestyle. If you ask me the same question I would say it’s the designer’s tribute to light as it falls upon a site.

Text: Mariam Qureshi

Visuals: R M Naeem

RM Naeem’s work is a paradox in itself. His art work will speak loudly with an uncanny bluntness yet the execution will be calculated and with exceptional finesse. The reason why RM Naeem has managed to prove his mettle as one of Pakistan’s finest contemporary artist is not only because he has dabbled with all the contemporary artistic mediums such as installation and performance art, yet he has a deep respect and understanding of traditional art forms --- in short RM Naeem’s diversity as an artist is evident. RM Naeem talks about some of his recent works. His work carries vision and sometimes ironic humor.

He starts his discourse with a painting titled ‘Dulha Hazir Hai’. This painting depicts an emaciated man wearing a sehra and posing in front of a cactus. Naeem explains that in our society men want to get married without realizing whether they can support a wife and a family. The cactus implies the shape of a phallus, an innuendo of the prevalent sexual frustration amongst Pakistani people.

Text: Salwat Ali
Visuals: VM Gallery

Who we are is determined by where we come from and how we define ourselves.
A new type of person whose orientation and view of the world profoundly transcends his or her indigenous culture is developing from the complex of social, political, economic, and educational interactions of our time.

“Nation, culture, and society exert tremendous influence on each of our lives, structuring our values, engineering our view of the world, and patterning our responses to experience. Human beings cannot hold themselves apart from some form of cultural influence. No one is culture free. Yet, the conditions of contemporary history are such that we may now be on the threshold of a new kind of person, a person who is socially and psychologically a product of the interweaving of cultures in the twentieth century.”

-Peter Adler
Centered on the multi-visions of multiculturalism a recent VM exhibition, Homelands- A 20th Century Story of Home, Away and All the Places In Between, curated by Latika Gupta attempts to project this continuously evolving definition of ‘home.’ Comprising art productions selected from the British Council Contemporary Art collection Homelands is a concentration of British artists but their focus is not confined just to Britain because as Andrea Rose, Dir Visual Arts points out, “Britishness” itself is now an increasingly fluid concept, with the capital city, London, home to 300 different nationalities. The artworks in the exhibition explore a range of meanings associated with the word “homeland”: migration, exile, displacement, the search for belonging, and the life of a minority community. Through these themes, Homelands expands its scope to show how identities are no longer defined in terms of nationality, but also through language, religion, ethnicity and custom.

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

- "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

Laying the foundation for a quality life in Aliabad

Creating breathing spaces

Imran Mir | 1950-2014

A Manifesto of Design

Post-disaster Construction Using Vernacular Traditions

Festival Marketplaces- A brief background

Mega Infrastructure Projects and their Impacts on the Urban Design of Karachi

DESIGN OF INFRASTRUCTURE

Art & Architecture Education Part II

Resonating Spaces

RM Naeem on Red chilies, secularism and the male ego

Contemporary Notions of Home

THEME 2012 - RESIDENCES OF PAKISTAN

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