Abstract:
In some way, architecture plays a part in preserving memory and history of a place and
representing the culture. Whether or not it was its intended purpose, a building, landscape
or even a piece or rock is the essence that witness the happening of that space which is
stuck in time. Architecture is an everyday part of this process, its intricate detail in putting
history and culture down on its site goes down to every minor detail of the memory of its
making. This unique character of architecture can be used to identify various factors that
are still ambiguous for that particular area and help clarify various underlying forces forming
that area.
Using this concept, the thesis deals with studying Islamabad as a case study. Understanding
the city, analyzing it, and concluding that it has unique culture in the respect that the city
didn't take on the cultural influences from the context itself, but it created its own culture.
Still under the process of making, this culture is amalgamation of various already existing
cultures (national and international) growing within a city whose purpose was authoritative
in nature, primary focus was global exposure, rather than local ties.
Primary objective is understanding the purpose of city, its unique nature, build culture and
its display of nature, the underlining patterns, lines of forces, attraction points and growth axis. Exploring the grid structure of Islamabad, physical and social grid and the underlying
connectors, the web of activities and nodal points, to understand the working of city and
the emerging culture of Islamabad, which is then translated architecturally.
So the building as an end product would be a homage to emerging culture of new city,
whose primary mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge about the situations and
working of the city (situated learning) and to preserve the memory of events (museum),
primarily consisting of displays and exhibition spaces categorized according to the stages of
development of city, supported by their respective institutions.
