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Dreaming of Entopia: Constantinos Doxiadis in Pakistan

Greek architect and town planner Constantinos Doxiadis played an enormous role in the urban development of the nascent nation state of Pakistan, most notably through his masterplan of its new capital city, Islamabad, in 1960. In this talk, I will discuss the initial stages of a (slowly) developing research project about Doxiadis’ lesser known projects in the country, gleaned from archival research in Athens while holding the BSA Arts Bursary in June/July 2020. This initial deep dive into private records brought up conflicting questions of 'development' and 'belonging', as the universalistic and modernistic view of human settlements that Doxiadis championed met a distinctive moment of Pakistan’s history – where dreams of building a new, modern nation state clashed with the influx of millions of refugees. This fallout of the 1947 Partition of British India is centred through a look at Doxiadis’ ‘minor’ projects, namely the refugee colonies in the fringes of Karachi.

Nov 16, 2020 07:00 PM in Athens