Joelho - Journal of Architectural Culture

Designing for Identity: Community-Centric Approaches to Public Spaces in Pakistan

2025-02-24T13:51:45+00:00

Public spaces are crucial in promoting community interaction, preserving cultural heritage, and promoting social unity. In Pakistan, with its rich cultural diversity and historical depth, public spaces often fall short of signifying the identities and aspirations of local populations. This research proposes a quantitative study to investigate how architectural designs can better reveal the cultural, historical, and social identities of communities across Pakistan. Using a survey questionnaire, the study will inspect community perceptions, preferences, and priorities for public space design, focusing on how these elements contribute to a sense of belonging and cultural identity.

The research aims to evaluate the current situation of public spaces in Pakistan, assess the gap between community expectations and existing designs, and suggest evidence-based recommendations for architects and urban planners. By focusing on diverse urban and semi-urban areas, including Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, and Peshawar, the study will capture the local variations in cultural expression and public space utilization.

Specific questions explored the degree to which public spaces fit in cultural motifs, historical narratives, and community-specific needs. Additional questions evaluated the intensity of public engagement in the design process and the willingness of communities to participate in future initiatives.

To Understand the Territory to Be Part of It

2024-11-24T15:56:54+00:00

This essay delves into the course programme of the Atelier Mayol at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio 2023-24. The atelier focused on the topic of summer house. Understanding summer as a moment where daily routine is temporary suspended and conventional domestic spaces are questioned.

The semester was an occasion to collectively discuss about living and to re-think the way we approach the theme of habitation. Learning to doubt. To think the building as an ecosystem. To approach the house as part of a territory. To observe, understand and interpret the local tradition and identity of a place. To work locally. To make responsible use of local resources. To value the logic of construction. To understand that form follows climate. Learning from tradition to revert the global warming tendency.

The atelier worked in three different places located in three distinct areas of Mallorca. Banyalbufar, a terraced landscape in the north of the Island. Sant Joan, a flat landscape in the center of the Island. Es Salobrar de Campos, a salines next to the sea in the south of the Island. Three locations that already explain the Island.

Is There a New De Re Aedificatoria in Our Dystopian Epoch of the Anthropocene?

2024-11-08T12:32:19+00:00

The utopian essence of Modernity was centred on a triumvirate - built on the congruence between the sovereign state, the techno-science establishment and the globalised market economy. This triangle of power has commodified nature and created a fragmented, pragmatic and operative world culture, which has led us to the crossroads we are collectively facing. The Anthropocene, from a philosophical point of view, is thus the time of the emergence of a dystopia that was born, not from any piecemeal feature of modern history, but from the uncritical and disproportionate fulfillment of modern utopian agendas.

Environment-Trouble

2025-01-16T13:41:21+00:00

"Environment-Trouble" is a commentary on "A Home is not a House," a 1965 article authored by Reyner Banham – together with his friend François Dallegret –that included a now famous, cross-section through an imagined, self-contained, "Environment-Bubble." It discusses the attempt by a group of five friends to actually build the Banham's bubble – to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary - on the rocky shores of Capri. Pretty soon, of course, they run into all sorts of trouble. The article is a description of what was learned, in particular about the material contingencies, social forces and planetary and cosmic realities that derail even the best-laid plans.

Territory, Climate, Body and Architecture

2024-10-13T17:39:02+01:00

This essay explores the capacity of vernacular types to engage, not only the climatic and ecological dimensions of a place, but also its social and cultural commonalities. Starting with the need for an experiential approach to architecture, an initial passage explores the multisensory dimension of the human body. This leads to the everyday life experience of the inhabitants of a given place. Every place reveals common behaviors that are shared among its inhabitants, and ecological types offer disciplinary tools for attuning these questions to architecture. This essay tentatively aspires to redefine the concept of typology, overlaying the formal and material questions considered by previous definitions with performative, behavioral, and phenomenological ones.