There’s Work to be Done

The hospital for women and children at Bamyan.

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. In their three-decade practice, they have built homes, hotels, offices, schools, even an international airport in Islamabad , and have won numerous awards, both at home and abroad. But it’s social housing that is Jilani’s first love.

One such was for the Momina Ismailis in Pakistan, who migrated from Gujarat nearly three generations ago. These agrarian people became the milkmen for Karachi, but it took them nearly 45 years to buy a piece of land they could call home. The Al-Azhar Garden housing in the city would give people a “sense of community, history, and pride”. The designers observed that religion, visits to the jamat khana, and gathering together was central to their way of life. The development, therefore, had courtyards, plazas, and gardens, linked by ceremonial pathways. “It took us nearly 10 years to build, and was an exercise in patience, and a belief that something good will come out of it. People still felt connected to their villages, so the 22 parks in the complex have been named after places in Gujarat,” says Jilani.

Their resilience reflects in the earthy tones of the buildings the Ismaili community live in. Ceramic tiles with floral patterns, precast concrete jaalis, and customised cemented leaf patterns on external walls make their homes artistic yet understated. “We had to make it known through our design that they were not just a number, but individuals in their own right,” says Jilani. “Sadly, these days, with migrations from rural to urban centres, that cohesiveness is lost and our cities are no longer people-led.”

With the firm belief that architecture should be able to give to the community, Arcop built 5,000 homes each, for survivors of the 2005 earthquake and the 2014 floods, working with rural communities and local panchayats. But they are not only invested in community projects. If they have to their credit, Ocean Towers (393 ft), a retail and hospitality building in Karachi and Pakistan’s tallest building, they are also currently constructing the Telenor headquarters in Islamabad.

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.”