The New Generation of Pakistani Architects

The National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore, considered one of the top architectural schools of Pakistan, holds its annual ‘jury’ for the graduating class in December. Last year, five students emerged as distinction-holders and another six passed with Honours. Apart from that, the over-all standard of the graduating class remained average. The jury, comprised of competent professionals from all over the country, performed their job well and the results were by and large transparent.

The management of NCA had done a good job at organizing the event and all of them were of the view that that with new and improved courses being introduced in the curriculum, the standard of the College was gradually improving. One would like to take their word for it, as we desperately need fresh batches of creative minds to slowly take over the reigns of the profession from the remnants of the Modern Movement - the reigning post-war architectural style in the West that heavily influenced most Pakistani architects of that era.

In a recent interview, Sikander Ajam, a well-known architect of Islamabad, lamented that our young architects lacked the ability view that though there are so many different fields within the profession of architecture that a student can choose to adopt; all students are driven towards becoming designers. of analysis and the habit of reading. He was of the As a result the talented ones became good design architects, whereas others have to be content with being mediocre designers. The schools don’t train students for fields such as Project Management or Contracts or Building Technology, and after having failed as designers, many of them eventually stumble into these fields.

Another breed that is coming out of architectural schools these days in abundance is the computer geeks. They excel in various architectural and graphics software and can do wonders with the keyboard and mouse, but have no clue about the essence of architecture and what Vitruvius (1st century AD Roman architect) preached in his famous “De Architectura”. These architects end up competing with the draughtsman and make one wonder about the future of architecture in the country!

Though most architectural schools can boast of a long list of brilliant teachers, the overall standard of architectural education in Pakistan leaves much to be desired. It is evident from the fresh graduates that the healthy mix of creative talent and acquired knowledge of the profession is conspicuously missing. Five years of instruction alone cannot make a good architect. The five years in school should let the student get into the habit to read, understand, absorb, analyze and interpret on his own and then go through life with that momentum. The student should not be helped in catching fish; rather, he should be taught how to catch fish on his own.

Students and fresh graduates must travel as much as they can and experience and feel architecture. They should read and understand what has been written over the centuries and what is now being written by architects and architectural critics about the field, all over the world. Otherwise, their existence as architects would remain limited to animated virtual reality and restricted to what their computer interprets for them.

Iqbal in his poem “Talib-e-Ilm” addresses the students:

“Khuda tujhe kisi toofan say aashna kar day
Keh tairay beher ki maujon may iztiraab nahin
Tujhe kitab say mumkin nahin faragh keh tu,
Kitab khwan hai, magar sahib-e-kitab nahin”