Architecture after independence: 55 architects of pakistan

Architecture After Independence, 55 Architects of Pakistan was published by Arch Press in 2016. It is a hard cover book of 336 pages, 29 X 26cm in full color, documenting the architectural productions of fifty-five architects in Pakistan, practicing since the Independence. The book is edited by Murtuza Shikoh & Zain Mankani, and has four substantial essays to launch the critical conversation. Kamil Khan Mumtaz provides a thorough documentation of the architects since independence, and follows their education and professional training in detail. He brings much personal knowledge of the individuals involved and the histories that developed around them. His essay should, in fact, be expanded into a new book, following his two earlier books of 1985 and 1999, documenting the sources of the contemporary architecture of Pakistan. Arif Hassan’s “Architecture Then and Now” provides the most critical view of the architecture in its ignorance of the socio-political realities that surround it. Even in cases where architects are building for the poor, he documents that architects are unfamiliar with materials, and techniques of construction that are inevitably used in those contexts, resulting in a discord between the built and the methods of building. Hasan-Uddin Khan provides a bibliography of books that cover recent architecture in Pakistan, most valuable for those interested in researching this arena. He continues by analyzing the development of possible architectural agendas since “independence”, from post-colonial to modern to Islamic identity to regionally appropriate and finally to hyper-modern. Jawaid Haider traces the history of an integrative model of studio instruction, developed at the Dawood College Department of Architecture, and follows its trajectory to contemporary instruction and provides a critique of the instruction of architecture both in Pakistan and abroad. He also points to important fissures between education and practice. Each essay concentrates on a particular angle of analysis, and collectively, they provide a great introduction to the issues at stake, both in the work presented and in the larger architectural context of Pakistan, the region and the globe.