Pakistani architect Yawar Jilani on people-centric architecture and pursuing his first love — social housing.
What one often remembers about Bamiyan, Afghanistan, are the towering Buddhas that were felled by the Taliban in 2001. What one forgets is the beauty of the UNESCO-protected valley, its semi-mountainous terrain and rocky cliffs. On the Silk Route, Bamiyan was the confluence of diverse cultures and its architecture treads gently, respecting the land. However, given Bamyan’s war-torn present, people in these areas have little or no access to healthcare. So the Aga Khan Development Network got architect Yawar Jilani and his team at Arcop, Pakistan, to build and masterplan a hospital for women and children.
Being relevant to society was Jilani’s biggest motivation to becoming an architect, a lesson he learned from his mentor Ramesh Khosla, who was working on the Quetta Serena Hotel in the 1980s. The founder member of Arcop Design Group in Delhi, architect Khosla and team had just won the Aga Khan Award for the Mughal Sheraton hotel in Agra.
In 1987, inspired by Khosla, Jilani and Mahboob Khan, his professional partner, set up Arcop in Pakistan. “It was the time when Zia-ul-Haq was President. He wanted architecture with arches and cosmetic Islamic gestures. But I believed there had to be more depth,” says Jilani. ...
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Jilani acknowledges that there are other challenges in Pakistan, the primary one being security. “People have layers and layers of security in their own homes, but they want it in public projects too. A client would prefer to have a barbed wire fence even around a school. Imagine how that will affect children who study there. We have to find ways around it as architects to nurture a sense of trust,” says Jilani. “In Karachi, for the first time, the government is working in the urban space by introducing a rapid bus transit in the central business district. It’s important that we, as professionals, engage with the government, and they also cooperative with us. We need to think out of the box, about the way architecture is taught, and how it can be made people-centric in the broader sense. Else our cities will only deteriorate.”
....“We were clear that while we wanted to embrace modernity, we also wanted to be sensitive to the terrain. The relationship to the land was important. Many people come to the hospital in carts or on donkeys. We have to keep those things in mind,” says Jilani, speaking at “Windows & Mirrors — Looking at Contemporary Architecture in South Asia”, the closing conference of the State of Architecture exhibition last month in Mumbai. Accordingly,
“We were clear that while we wanted to embrace modernity, we also wanted to be sensitive to the terrain. The relationship to the land was important. Many people come to the hospital in carts or on donkeys. We have to keep those things in mind,” says Jilani, speaking at “Windows & Mirrors — Looking at Contemporary Architecture in South Asia”, the closing conference of the State of Architecture exhibition last month in Mumbai. Accordingly, Arcop adopted rammed earth for the external walls, in keeping with local vernacular forms, and layered courtyards with public and private areas. With a central space designed in a Persian Char Bagh style, the movement between the courts gives visitors glimpses of the mountains, a healing in itself for the locals. “The people understand the land. Architecture is secondary to the place, how could we build anything here?” says the 54-year-old.