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Building, Dwelling, Dying: Architecture and History in Pakistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2020

Chris Moffat
Chris Moffat*
Affiliation:
School of History, Queen Mary University of London
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

There is a long history of scholars finding in architecture tools for thinking, whether this is the relationship between nature and culture in Simmel's ruins, industrial capitalism in Benjamin's Parisian arcades, or the rhythms of the primordial in Heidegger's Black Forest farmhouse. But what does it mean to take seriously the concepts and dispositions articulated by architects themselves? How might processes of designing and making constitute particular forms of thinking? This article considers the words and buildings of Lahore-based architect Kamil Khan Mumtaz (b. 1939) as an entry point into such questions. It outlines how professional architecture in Pakistan has grappled with the unsettled status of the past in a country forged out of two partitions (1947 and 1971). Mumtaz's work and thought—engaging questions of tradition, authority, craft and the sacred—demonstrates how these predicaments have been productive for conceptualizing time, labor and the nature of dwelling in a postcolonial world.

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Articles
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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 2021 , pp. 520 - 546
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

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18 Patrick Wakely, “Otto Koenigsberger Obituary,” The Guardian, 26 Jan. 1999. Koenigsberger's papers are stored at the Architectural Association Archives in London. An article in the AA Journal (April 1963) notes that Mumtaz was joined in his cohort by architects from India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Singapore, Trinidad and elsewhere.

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33 I deploy “craftsman” with full awareness of its gendered occlusions. In maintaining Mumtaz's usage of the term, I mean to underline a certain imaginary of traditional building practice and its proper subject in contemporary Pakistan.

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37 Mumtaz, Modernity and Tradition, 42, 30.

38 This, indeed, was the project of Ardalan and Bakhtiar's mentor, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who provided a Foreword to Ardalan, Nader and Bakhtiar, Laleh, The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture (Chicago, 1973), xi–xviGoogle Scholar. See also Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, Traditional Islam in the Modern World (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

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47 Interview with Mumtaz, Lahore, 12 Feb. 2018; NCA Archives 279 F: Personal File of Kamil Khan Mumtaz, 1966–80 (P/File H-35 [250]). His specific reason for leaving is not given but there is repeated mention of Mumtaz's involvement in “disturbances.”

48 See, for instance, Yasmeen Lari's “Preface” to Lari, Traditional Architecture of Thatta (Karachi, 1989). As one reviewer of this essay observed, the transformation of religious ornament into mass-produced market commodity ironically fulfills Mumtaz's call for a “lack of originality” in design—albeit without the ethic of building and dwelling he is prescribing.

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53 When, in a 2018 interview, I asked Mumtaz about the absence of Bangladesh, he countered that there was indeed a long-standing conversation in terms of methods and approaches, particularly with Muzharul Islam, a leading voice in “regional modernism” debates who also trained at the AA in the 1950s.

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57 Mumtaz, Modernity and Tradition, 57.

58 Ibid., 38. For variations on this theme in the history of Muslim societies see Christensen, Peter, ed., Expertise and Architecture in the Modern Islamic World (Bristol, 2018)Google Scholar.

59 On this genre of thinking see Yarrow, Thomas and Jones, Siân, “‘Stone Is Stone’: Engagement and Detachment in the Craft of Conservation Masonry,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 20 (2014), 256–75, at 257CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sennett, Richard, The Craftsman (New Haven, 2008)Google Scholar.

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61 Mumtaz, Modernity and Tradition, 17.

62 Ibid., caption to Plate 8.

63 Ibid., 63.

64 Ardalan and Bakhtiar, Sense of Unity, 10.

65 Ibid., 5.

66 Mumtaz, Modernity & Tradition, 66–7.

67 Ardalan and Bakhtiar, Sense of Unity, 5.

68 On the institution of the workshop across a diversity of contexts see Sennett, The Craftsman.

69 Sennett, The Craftsman, 54; see also the emphasis on “unity and equality” among Scottish masons, alongside a clear hierarchy in terms of experience, temperament and character in Yarrow and Jones, “Stone Is Stone,” 261.

70 Daechsel, Islamabad and the Politics of International Development, esp. chap. 2.

71 For a questioning of this primacy see Yarrow and Jones, “Stone Is Stone.”

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73 Indeed, Fathy was the first winner of the Aga Khan Chairman's Award in 1980. See his influential Architecture for the Poor (Chicago, 1973)Google Scholar. For insights into the function of tradition more generally in Pakistan see Iqtidar, Humeira, “Redefining ‘tradition’ in political thought,” European Journal of Political Theory 15/4 (2016), 424–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Cited in Mumtaz, , “The Architecture of Sufi Shrines,” in Quraeshi, Samina, ed., Sacred Spaces (Cambridge, MA, 2009), 41–68, at 42Google Scholar.

75 Mumtaz, “Architecture of Sufi Shrines,” 43.

76 A jibe I heard on fieldwork suggested that, if one commissions Mumtaz to build a house, they shouldn't expect to move in for ten to twenty years.

77 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Foreword, in Ardalan and Bakhtiar, Sense of Unity, xi. Bakhtiar was Nasr's student at Tehran University in the 1960s.

78 Mumtaz, Modernity and Tradition, Plate 8.

79 Mumtaz, “Architecture of Sufi Shrines,” 54.

80 Interview with Mumtaz, Lahore, 12 Feb. 2018. Lings was a student of Frithjof Schuon.

81 Ardalan and Bhaktiar, Sense of Unity, 10.

82 Mumtaz, “Architecture of Sufi Shrines,” 43.

83 Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking.”

84 I am grateful to Vazira Zamindar for encouraging me to think about this aspect of Mumtaz's biography. On Lahore as palimpsest see Glover, William, Making Lahore Modern (Minneapolis, 2008)Google Scholar.

85 For an account of this terrain, see Maqsood, Ammara, The New Pakistani Middle Class (Cambridge, MA, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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88 Spiro Kostof, “Preface,” in Kostof, The Architect, xvii–xx, at xvii, describes architects as “conceivers of buildings,” who mediate between clients and builders.

89 Amen Jaffer, “Inhabiting the Power of the Sacred: Legitimacy and Affect in Punjabi Shrines” (Ph.D. dissertation, New School for Social Research, 2016).

90 Mumtaz, “Architecture of Sufi Shrines,” 60.

91 Ibid., 55.

92 Ibid., 58.

93 Declan Walsh, “Of Saints and Sinners,” The Economist, 18 Dec. 2008.

94 I am grateful to Umber bin Ibad for conversation on this point. See also his Sufi Shrines and the Pakistani State (London, 2018)Google Scholar.

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99 Mumtaz, “Architecture of Sufi Shrines,” 60.

100 “Our Mission,” www.lcs.org.pk. The LCS was initiated in 1984 by the architect Zahir-ud Deen Khawaja, supported by others including the architect Nayyar Ali Dada and human rights advocate I. A. Rehman.

101 Kamil Khan Mumtaz, “Sustainable Cultural Tourism,” Friday Times, 25 July 2004.

102 “UN urges Pakistan to halt construction of Orange Metro Train,” Daily Times, 25 Jan. 2016.

103 Bhatti, Shaila, Translating Museums (Walnut Creek, 2012)Google Scholar.

104 “Construction on Lahore's Orange Line Metro Train to Be Suspended: LHC,” Dawn, 19 Aug. 2016.

105 Interview with Mumtaz, Lahore, 12 Feb. 2018. The joke derives from a spoof news site. See “Shahbaz Vows to Construct New Heritage Sites along OMLT Route,” Daily Khabaristan, 20 Aug. 2016, at https://dailytimes.com.pk/62454/satire-shahbaz-vows-to-construct-new-heritage-sites-along-olmt-route. I am grateful to Timothy Cooper for this reference.