Summer Seminars & Workshops at Hast-o-Neest

NED Workshop 2015

Workshop at NED, Karachi from 9^th – 13^th February 2015

Title: Geometry in Design

Taught by: Taimoor K. Mumtaz

Introduction:

Although geometry plays a prominent part in Pakistan’s heritage in the visual arts in general and architecture in particular, but its teaching as a design tool in the schools of art & architecture is disappointingly limited. It can and should be a strong element in a Pakistani architect’s design repertoire. This workshop aims to be an introduction to the study of this facet of our heritage and its application to contemporary design.

Aim, Objectives & Teaching Method:

The use of geometry in design can be divided into three main components:

i) Geometry as pattern for architectural  surfaces or elements like lattice jails in various materials.

ii) Geometry as a tool for laying-out, constructing or drawing forms and elements.

iii) Geometry as a method for achieving harmony of proportions in forms and spaces.

This Workshop focuses primarily on the first of these elements i.e. Geometry as pattern for surfaces and elements. The other two elements would be introduced through lecture presentations. The primary aim of the Workshop is to equip students with basic geometric tools and concepts as well as the application of these to design. This would be achieved through drawing, model-making and a site visit to a contemporary design project.

Shirin Jinnah Colony Clinic - Part-II

Tree of Life - Momin Adamjee Center in Shireen... by sinatrust

Link to an article on a clinic-design approach similar to that of SINA Clinics:

In Haiti Battling Disease With Open-Air Clinics

Primary Health Clinic at Shirin Jinnah Colony Karachi

Client: SINA Health, Education & Welfare Trust 

Outline Design Drawings

Clinic Opening Ceremony 24th April 2014

Beri tree & Dispensary Window

View of Treatment Room from Court

Waiting Area for Women/Children & Reception Arch

Custom-designed Concrete-tile modular External Dado based on stone carving designs from Makli

Pressed cement floor tiles

Mr & Mrs Adamji (the Donors), Riaz Kamlani CEO SINA & Taimoor K. Mumtaz Architect

First Patient with modular custom-designed colour-concrete lattice jali based on a Mughal stone jali

Summer Workshops at Hast-o-Neest Lahore

Scheduled for June, July & August 2014 

Summer Seminars at Hast-o-Neest Lahore

Scheduled for June, July & August 2014

3-Day Seminar/Short Course:Proportion in Mughal Architecture 16th to 18th April 2014

Inspiring Architecture - Madrasa al-Ghiyathiyya

The Madrasa al-Ghiyathiyya is located in Khargird, a village 147 kilometers southwest of Mashad in Khorasan province. The madrasa takes its name from its founder Pir Ahmad, who was Shah Rukh's (1405-1447) vazir, under the title of Ghiyath al-Din, from 1417 until his death in 1447. Inscriptions reveal that the madrasa was designed and built mainly by the engineer Qavam al-Din Shirazi between 1438-1444. However, he died before its completion, at which time another architect took up the remaining work. The calligrapher, Jalal al-Din, was the same man who worked on Gauhar Shad's madrasa at Herat.... 

Source: www.archnet.org

Link on Archnet

KKM Sketches

Saturday May 18th, 2013: Symposium in London

Click Here for Symposium Leaflet

Skip to content

Link to Symposium Page on The Matheson Website

May 2013 Symposium: A Search for the Timeless

in Sacred Art and Architecture

A Search for the Time-less in Sacred Art and Architecture:
The Case of an Architectural Practice in Lahore & an Arts and Crafts
Institution in London 

This symposium is to discuss the place of traditional art and architecture in the 
contemporary world together with its underlying language of geometry, and to 
examine the different challenges faced by the East (Pakistan) and 
the West (United Kingdom).

LECTURES:

• Kamil Khan Mumtaz (Kamil Khan Mumtaz, Architects)
‘Continuing Tradition: Four Decades of Architectural Practice in Lahore,
Pakistan’

• Taimoor Khan Mumtaz (Hast-o-Neest Institute)
‘In Search of the ‘Timeless’: Geometric Proportioning in Mughal Architecture’

• Paul Marchant (The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts)
‘Polishing the Mirror’—The Eternal Archetype reflected in Natural and
Cosmic Order. The Discipline of Geometry and the Continuous Renewal 
of the Traditional Arts and Crafts

Saturday May 18th, 2013
9.15am–4.30pm

Royal Asiatic Society
14 Stephenson Way
London NW1 2HD
(nearest underground Euston / Euston Square)

Click here to view or download our full day programme.

Cost of day to include the three lectures, coffee/tea in the morning and afternoon:
£15.00. Students and other concessions: £10.00. Payment can be made on the day
of the event in cash or cheque, or through our donations page (click here),
but places are limited so please book early.

For more details, and to register, please click here to contact us.

Copyright © 2011–2013 · All content copyrighted by The Matheson Trust
and the respective contributors

Site by www.samamara.com

3-D Study: Ribbed Domes

3-D Study: Ribbed Domes. from KKMArchitects on Vimeo.

Workshop IV at NED Karachi 2013

At NED Karachi

10^th – 18^th February, 2013

Workshop:

Taj Mahal - In Search of the Essence of its Beauty.

(Geometrical Proportioning in Mughal Architecture)

Conducted by Taimoor Khan Mumtaz

 Highlights

Theoretical Frame-work for the understanding of Islamic Art & Architecture.

Practical exposure to the use of Geometry in design.

Methods & Vocabulary of design used in Mughal Architecture.

Geometric Analysis of Mughal Architecture.

Concluding Exhibition

Article in Express Tribune

"The light sky blue signifies the mercy of God and it is used heavily in early Islamic scripture... Dark blue, the colour of the tiles used for the lower half of the verandah walls, signifies mysticism in Islam. The golden and black arch (mehrab) signalling the direction of the Kaaba is inspired by the tomb of Bayazid Bastami in Iran," Iqbal Salahuddin PHOTO. ABID NAWAZ/EXPRESS

LAHORE:Iqbal Salahuddin has a passion for Islamic architecture in Spain, Morocco, Turkey, Iran and the Subcontinent. So when building a mosque in memory of his father, he decided to borrow from them.

“I wanted to incorporate similar colour themes here,” he says, pointing to the hues of blue in the under-construction mosque at a one-kanal site in Salli Town, which is named after his father Mian Salahuddin, the son-in-law of Allama Iqbal.

“The light sky blue signifies the mercy of God and it is used heavily in early Islamic scripture,” says Salahuddin. Dark blue, the colour of the tiles used for the lower half of the verandah walls, signifies mysticism in Islam, he says. A golden and black arch (mehrab) signalling the direction of the Kaaba is inspired by the tomb of Bayazid Bastami in Iran.

There are inspirations from closer to home too. The floral frescoes are modelled on Masjid Wazir Khan and Masjid Bibi Khanum. Architect Kamil Khan Mumtaz, an authority on Mughal architecture, designed the building.

Click Here For Full Article & Images

Metal Grill Study-Model

Study-Model by 

Architect Hassan Bin Tariq (2009 NCA)

for developing a louvered metal-grill for a 

South-West facing (38 deg) window

for a KKM project in Lahore.

Lecture (via Skype) by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Workshop III at NED, February 2012

Site-Visit to A Contemporary Project: Mazar of Hazrat Tanbih Ahmed in Sakhi Graveyard, Karachi.

Site Visist to Shahi Mosque at Thatta

Islamic Architecture Workshop at NED, 2012                                        

A 10-day workshop conducted by Taimoor Khan Mumtaz, was organized by the History Group of the Department of Architecture and Planning NEDUET from 6^th till 16^th February, 2012. This was the third in the HG Workshop series. 

This year’s workshop was special on many counts. In the previous two years the workshops had been mainly focused on learning the vocabulary and drawing methods of elements of Islamic Architecture, ending in fabrication of life-sized elements, but in non-architectural materials – card-board and polystyrene respectively. But this year the focus of the workshop was equally divided into the elements or vocabulary on the one hand and the process and materials of construction on the other.

The premise for this year’s workshop was the observation that in traditional architecture one sees a balance of two key qualities. One set of qualities derives from the art of architecture itself i.e. from sound building practice and building construction solutions according to the material of construction used. The other set of qualities derives from the consistent application of a coherent aesthetic system which aims to achieve harmony and beauty in the spaces and surfaces it creates.  This last is in its turn based on the philosophy of Islamic art which was the third main element of the workshop.

An example of the first set of qualities is the solution to the problem of roofing a square room with bricks. This results not only in domes but also in a variety of ways to solve the problem of transitioning from the cube of the room to the sphere of the dome. Thus the participants saw in their field visit to Makli and Thatta that the whole vocabulary of brick architecture of this region results in part from purely building construction solutions.

One of the aims of the workshop was to focus on this first set of qualities i.e. those resulting from the way a building is put together. An appreciation of this aspect of architecture  is sorely missing in architectural education in Pakistan and is therefore reflected in the unconvincing and 'cardboard' architecture we see so often around us.

The second aim of the workshop was to address the inexplicable absence of the traditional architecture of Pakistan from architectural education. Given the fact that Pakistan is heir to a traditional architecture which is one of the summits of world architecture, the workshop aimed at studying and learning from this tradition.

The workshop was based on the argument that a Pakistani architect should in all logic have some exposure to the basic vocabulary and methods used in the traditional architecture of Pakistan. For it can be argued that a self-confident, convincing and meaningful architecture (or architectures) for Pakistan is only possible if it is rooted in such a knowledge.

Lastly we are also heirs to a long building-craft tradition which again finds no place in our architectural education. Hence the workshop included the active participation of Ustad Javed Chohan a hereditary master-mason from Karachi and his team of masons.

    

4-Week Course on Islamic Architecture

Symbolism of Sufi Shrines

Architect Kamil Khan Mumtaz explains the symbolic Architecture of Sufi shrines.

Interview with Khwaja Rizwan Qadeer and Shahid Niaz Khan, builders of Baba Hasan Din's Shrine.


Videos by Architect Amir Jamal

formerly with KKM Archietcts,
Currently Teaching Assistant at McGill University
Consultant at Dan Hanganu Architects

From the Archives: KKM Project in 'The Economist'

Building Baba Hassan Din’s shrine
by Alixandra Fassina
from the Economist article

'Echoing down a winding stairwell, a scraping of masonry and clink of chisel on marble signal a remarkable monument rising. It is in the scruffy Lahori suburb of Baghbanpura, where Iqbal lived for six decades. From a narrow alley running alongside the shrine, it is mostly hidden: its high outer walls, of recessed brickwork speckled with multicoloured tiles, rising out of sight to a pair of domes and skinny minarets. A few steep steps lead into a small cloistered forecourt, where masons are at work.

Either side of the forecourt, about ten metres apart, are two false burial chambers. These are beautifully decorated, with white marble lattice and marble mosaics studded with green jade, lapis lazuli and agate. One is for Iqbal and the other for his mentor, a mystic called Baba Hassan Din, who lived in a brick cell on this site and died in 1968. The men’s true graves lie underneath, in brick-walled chambers, faintly murmuring with the sounds of the street outside.'

The Economist
- Of Saints and Sinners,

Dec 18th 2008

Delhi, Lahore and Sehwan Sharif

 

Link to Article (Click)

Marble work at Baba Hassan Din’s shrine
by Alixandra Fassina



Safavid Surfaces and Parametricism

by

Derek Kaplan

in Archinect.com
December 2, 2011

Click here to go to Article

'... the first question is not: are we today capable of producing patterns of this sophistication? With our tools, we had better be, this and beyond. The more important question is: are we today capable of a process of aesthetic design refinement carried this far -- in which the specificity of intent drives the tools, as opposed to the tools filling an absence of specific intent? '




Breakdown of sub-pattern module distortions
(drawing by Derek Kaplan from article)

  


 




Photo by Derek Kaplan from article