Long worthy of close attention, the work of Pakistani architect Kamil Khan Mumtaz offers an insight into questions of preservation and progress within the social, intellectual and political complexities of South Asia. Author and academic Chris Moffat’s ongoing research features extensive conversations with the architect himself, as well as unique photographic and visual evidence of his legacy.

This essay was excerpted from The Time of Building: Kamil Khan Mumtaz and Architecture in Pakistan (Folio Books, 2025), by Chris Moffat, which is available as a PDF at architecturalarchives.pk.

Down a narrow lane in the densely inhabited Lahore neighbourhood of Baghbanpura, there is a construction site. The construction site is also a shrine. This is Mazaar Baba Hassan Din, the resting place of a Sufi saint who died in 1968 and also of his disciple, Hafiz Iqbal, a pir (spiritual guide) in his own right, who died in 2001. Two tall minarets signal the site from afar.

A hand-painted green sign announces the Mazaar to passersby, while a vault decorated with muqarnas and a cypress tree relief — an ancient symbol of mourning — guides the visitor towards the entranceway. Construction of the Mazaar began in 2001 and continues today, in 2023, as I write the introduction to this book. The main structure is finished, as are decorations in the rooms that house the saints’ remains, and the building is open to devotees and other visitors. Custodians of the tomb have ample space to host an annual urs, the customary death anniversary celebrations for a Sufi saint which is intended to publicise their teachings. These activities take place beside scaffolded walls and around piles of building materials. Certain areas remain closed off; parts await ornamentation. On my first visit in 2018, I met a glass artisan assembling a sheesh mahal (palace of mirrors) in a room off the main courtyard. He had, at that point, been working for one year and estimated it would take him another four or five to finish laying the intricate patterns of small, blown glass pieces. There are also plans to adorn the external façade with glazed tile mosaics, deploying the traditional craft of kashikari (ceramic work).

The craftsmen commissioned to complete decorative work on the building — from stone carving and inlay to plaster relief (thoba and ghalibkari) and engraving (naqqashi) — work with significant independence from the building’s architect, Kamil Khan Mumtaz. Mumtaz established the basic structure and layout for the Mazaar, his efforts devoted to ensuring correct proportions, symmetry and an overall harmony of space. Some of this work can be seen in the elevations that serve as chapter dividers in this book. But Mumtaz readily deferred to his craftsmen collaborators, many of whom are from families that have refined particular practices across multiple generations.

At Mazaar Baba Hassan Din, the time of building is rich with significance. The slow pace of the work and the freedom given to creative practice contrasts starkly with the commercial imperatives and compressed timelines of most contemporary architecture — in Pakistan and elsewhere. But beyond the refusal to pursue a particular idea of productivity and profit, the construction in Baghbanpura is also understood as an act of devotion. For Mumtaz and his collaborators, the building is not simply a material shelter for physical remains, but a means to express and encounter a sense of the sacred.

The Time of Kamil Khan Mumtaz
Mazaar Baba Hassan Din is an unusual building in twenty-first century Lahore. Its design and construction have been approached with an ethic that is exceedingly rare in the city. But the Mazaar is further distinguished by the fact that it is modelled on another building, the famous shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, Iraq, which Mumtaz adapted for the much smaller plot in Baghbanpura. This holy site, which first appeared in the eighth century, owes its current form to extensions and restorations pursued by Safavid patrons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What does it mean to insert a seventeenth century building into Lahore’s bustling, twenty-first century metropolitan reality?

Mumtaz’s approach is, in my reading, premised on a ‘recursive’ model of time, an understanding of building that is invested in rhythms of repetition, recurrence and return.¹ His work in Pakistan over many decades has established him as one of the country’s most celebrated architects, an iconic figure not just for the profession but also in the realms of architectural education and activism around heritage and the built environment. But this prominence has not translated straightforwardly into influence. Mumtaz’s approach to building demands a level of care and commitment that is notably absent in the vast majority of building activity in Pakistan.

Mumtaz was initially uncertain about the title I chose for our book. He preferred a title that was more explicit about his philosophy, something like ‘Continuing Tradition’, a notion he detailed in our conversations. But I was convinced that ‘The Time of Building’ helped to capture not just where Mumtaz arrived but also where he began: that contrast between the ‘generative’ time of modernism and the ‘recursive’ time of tradition, his movement from seeing architecture as the ‘creation’ of something new to building work as the ‘realisation’ of spiritual truths through structure and form. This phrase, ‘The Time of Building’, is also illuminating in a more general sense. Mumtaz is deeply engaged with the time in which design and construction takes place. His approach to architecture is premised on a sense of responsibility to the present — his context of work — but also to the future, the question of how a building will be inhabited and used and how it will endure the passage of time.

There is one other ‘time’ to take seriously, and that is the time of Mumtaz himself — the world he was born into, the experiences of his generation, the national and global conjunctures which determined his practice and guided his commitments, political and otherwise. Born in Calcutta, British India, in 1939, Mumtaz was in Murree at the time of independence and partition in 1947. He had a peripatetic childhood, moving between Karachi, Chittagong and Lahore. Mumtaz trained as an architect in London (1957-63) and, after a short period of work in the UK and Ghana (1963-66), returned to Lahore in 1966 to begin his career as an architectural practitioner and educator. His work as an activist and campaigner followed closely.

Mumtaz belongs to Pakistan’s first ‘postcolonial’ generation of architects — figures born around the time of independence, who came of age in Pakistan and established their practices in the country, even if they might have been trained abroad. His major contemporaries include Habib Fida Ali (1935-2017), Yasmeen Lari (b.1941), Nayyar Ali Dada (b.1943) and Arif Hasan (b.1943). As a generation, they are distinguished by their concern to identify an ‘appropriate’ architecture for Pakistan. This preoccupation was prompted, in part, by a broader, global reassessment of international modernism in the 1960s and 70s — a sense that the radical promise that had launched the Modern Movement in the early decades of the twentieth century had now been exhausted. Rather than crafting new spaces of equality and possibility, modern architecture appeared increasingly as a prestige object for the elite and ruling classes.

Where modernist principles and practices were animated in service of ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ — from social housing projects in Europe to the expansive urban development projects of postcolonial Asia and Africa — they swiftly attracted critique as impositions from above, undemocratic, out of touch with local histories and everyday desires. Mumtaz’s response has been a radical one, questioning the architect’s identification as instigator of a new world and inverting dominant ideas of creativity, innovation and production. In this he has taken very seriously the relationship between Islam and architecture, seeking to learn from local traditions and practices whilst also challenging the narrow and politicised forms of religion that have been a recurring feature of Pakistan’s recent decades.

Mumtaz’s generation of architects is also distinguished by positions of privilege in Pakistani society. Pakistan’s government did not establish an institution for architectural training in the country until 1958. Mumtaz and most of his contemporaries belonged to families with the resources to fund their education abroad, primarily in architectural schools in the United Kingdom and the United States. Associated with elite circuits through family connections, their fledgling practices found a ready market for private commissions. The play of ideas that has characterised Mumtaz’s professional path cannot be seen outside of this context: his ability to dwell on the problem of ‘dwelling’ has been enabled by his distance from the economic pressures and the discourse of ‘need’ that informed largescale development projects elsewhere in the country, even if he initially desired to have an impact in such domains, for instance through an early interest in mass housing.

What can be learned from this generation today? Several conditions no longer hold. In twenty-first century Pakistan, there is now a large number of established and prestigious architectural schools as well as a process for accreditation which has significantly diversified the profession. The sense of an open future that drew the young Mumtaz to modernism — as well as, we shall see, to Marxist and Maoist organising — has long disappeared, with environmental crises, persistent economic inequalities and an oppressive political atmosphere creating a highly attenuated sense of the possible in contemporary Pakistan.

But on the other hand, Mumtaz and his generation remain instructive. The careful and committed attention they have paid to questions of context and history in their work, and the courage demonstrated by Mumtaz, in particular, to radically question the thoughtless drift of the status quo, provide enduring models for how architects can critically engage the industries, politics and economics of building and construction. Our conversation considers what this approach means for the practice of architecture in the contemporary world but also as an intervention into the fault lines of Pakistan’s twenty-first century present.

The Life of Tradition
Chris MoffattI know the category of ‘tradition’ is important to you, but I wanted to ask if you think it is, in some ways, limited in capturing what you do, and especially that element of improvisation in your practice. The idea of craftsmanship — which is very much about process, approach, mentality — includes space for improvisation and adaptation, even if it is dispensing with what you describe as egotistical pursuits of novelty and innovation familiar from the history of modern architecture.

I expect that, as an architect, the category of ‘tradition’ invites a lot of misreading. People often understand tradition as informed by nostalgia, as connected to the desire for a lost world, even though that older world was structured around certain hierarchies and inequalities between peoples. It has reactionary connotations. I would like to hear your thoughts on this. Is the category limiting, and if so, why use it?

Kamil Khan MumtazYes, you’re right. The term tradition has its problems, and there is a common understanding of tradition that is just superficial. Certain forms, certain materials, certain products are identified as ‘tradition’. This is a big problem. What people identify our work with, what they expect us to do. When I say there’s a lot of education to be done, we spend a lot of time explaining what tradition is really about.

Many times, people come to us for all the wrong reasons. I mean, this has happened just recently. We had somebody come to us and say we want to design a building after the Diwan-i-Aam in Delhi‘s Red Fort.² And we just kind of dismissed it. We said, “What do you mean? You want to rebuild that? Recreate that? Or something that just references it? Exactly what do you want?” To the extent that she gave up, and we gave up. She went to some normal architect, and he designed something for her. They actually built the foundations, and only then she realised that this guy, the new architect, doesn’t know what she’s talking about. He just cannot deliver. And so, she came back to us. We had an interesting session. Very quickly we understood each other. I think we helped her to understand herself. She had not been able to articulate what she really wanted.

This kind of thing happens all the time. She suddenly discovered that what came intuitively, spontaneously, what she was feeling inside, was something really valuable and valid. She couldn’t put her finger on why and what. So, ‘tradition’ is a very tricky term. We get misunderstood and wrongly labelled, and of course criticised and hated. Not allowed in the studios! It’s this conventional understanding of what tradition is about: “it’s copying, imitating, killing.”

CMYes, that it’s regressive, or in some ways or conservative.

KKMIt’s very difficult. But the moment you start explaining what you really mean, then it becomes very clear that this approach is not just about architectural form or material. It must be contextualised as a response to climate change, global warming, income inequalities, all of these things are part and parcel of the same challenge: the existential crisis of our time. The survival of our humanity and our environment.

CMSpeaking to architects in Pakistan and elsewhere, one gets the sense that accountability to the client, to the person paying the bills, often infringes on the architect’s vision, on the direction of their work. So, to be able to build a relationship with a client that is centred on education and exchange is probably quite rare. It seems that this is a quality that your son, Taimoor, has carried on as well. But I get the impression that such a sympathetic relationship with clients is uncommon.

KKMWell, talking about what has become standard, common practice in architectural studios, I find I am increasingly very disturbed — I would almost say I’m shocked — at what the profession is doing. As I tell anyone who cares to listen, look, architecture has gone bankrupt. There is no basis for form-making anymore. Even up to the modern movement, there was a very clear, strong basis for design. OK, it was function, efficiency. But now there is nothing. You end up being purely subjective, whimsical, just to shock and awe and create… It’s so horrible what’s going on.

It’s not just about personal whims. It’s a part and parcel of the other package, and that is the power of global, corporate capital. The shameless manner in which the profession has allowed itself to be used. It’s just like the medical profession. We still remember the old family doctors who would come around with their black suitcase, but now these pharmaceutical companies, their reps go around calling on the doctors, and it’s just salesmanship. They’ve changed the whole medical profession. The medical profession is now just a marketing platform for pharmaceuticals.

Exactly the same has now happened right in front of our eyes, where the architectural profession has degraded and debased itself to become just a marketing platform for the products of global corporate capital. It’s so shameless. And all the same old tricks: invitations, free tickets to Europe, conferences, commissions.

CMCan I ask you to expand on that phrase you used earlier — as you put it “the existential crisis of our time”?

KKM“Our time” has been called the Age of Man, the Anthropocene Age, because the most significant changes in the geosphere in this epoch are caused by human activity — or, more precisely, economic activity, particularly industrial production and consumption. The exploitation of the earth’s resources has continued to increase to the point that by 1970, consumption exceeded the annual productive capacity of the planet. By 2008 it was 50% more than capacity, and now it is 75% more than capacity.³

So, how did we get here? In the natural economy, man’s transactions with nature were based on need, and there was no damage to the ecosystem. In the agrarian economy, civilised man took possession of these resources — land, plants, animals — to produce more than his needs, but without exceeding nature’s productive capacity. However, surplus wealth did result in contestations, conflicts and inequalities. With industrialisation, modern man achieved remarkable increases in production, but at the cost of extracting more than the planet’s productive capacity. Now, to generate still more wealth, our present consumerist economy, based on desire rather than need, has not only exceeded the limits of nature’s resources but also increased waste and pollution far beyond sustainable limits. [...]

Today, as we pass one tipping point after another on the route to irreversible climate change, the extinction of species, and the depletion of resources, the need to revert to the traditional paradigms has never been greater. The traditional narratives of all civilisations recognise the primordial, natural state of hunting and gathering as the “normative” state of man, the Golden Age, in harmony and balance with nature. Secondly, they recognise the transition to agriculture and commodity production, to settled communities and villages, to market towns and city states, as deviations from the norm. These arrangements provide material benefits no doubt, but also opportunities for excesses, of transgressing normative limits and disrupting the harmony and balance with nature.

Bios

Chris Moffat is a Senior Lecturer in South Asian History at Queen Mary University of London. His research and teaching are grounded in an interest in the ‘public life’ of history, and his writing on the politics of the past draws on both archival and ethnographic methods. In 2019 he was Visiting Faculty in the Department of History at Government College University, Lahore. Moffat is the author of India’s Revolutionary Inheritance: Politics and the Promise of Bhagat Singh (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Kamil Khan Mumtaz is one of Pakistan’s most celebrated architects and continues to run his private practice in Lahore. In 2019, he was awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz by the Government of Pakistan. He is the author of Architecture in Pakistan (1985).

Notes

1For an extended discussion, see Chris Moffat, ‘Building, Dwelling, Dying: Architecture and History in Pakistan’, Modern Intellectual History 18:2 (2021), 520-46.

2The Diwan-i-Aam, or Public Audience Hall, was a space used for public functions by the Mughal rulers of Delhi. It was built for Emperor Shah Jahan in the 1640s.

3This information is derived from the Global Footprint Network website, footprintnetwork.org.