Talking to Dr. Gulzar Haider

Dr. Gulzar Haider is the Founding Dean of Razia School of Architecture, BNU. He has two undergraduate degrees in Civil Engineering and Architecture, and a PhD from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

I park my car outside the towering university building, so clearly a Nayyar Ali Dada, and inspect the stairway that leads downwards into one of the many courtyards that serve as center points for the various art departments housed. Beaconhouse National University sits all the way across the Ring Road in Raiwind; my Mehran managed a hundred kilometers an hour in an effort to get to Dr. Gulzar Haider’s office at the appointed time.

It is ten minutes to two ‘o’ clock. I take hold of my black diary and head inside. On the first floor, a very polite woman takes me through the double doors and into Dr. Gulzar Haider’s spacious office. I thank both her and the professor for arranging this interview.

Dr. Gulzar begins talking about his days in university. He fondly recalls a certain Dr. Mubashir.

“I did my civil engineering from Engineering University (University of Engineering and Technology). I was a favorite of Dr. Mubashir Hussain, who was a very good teacher. When I finished my degree, he sat me in a cart behind his bicycle and took me all the way to NCA. There, in the principal’s office, he told the man I would be wasted if I agreed to take on a job as an engineer in Islamabad. Those were the days when a team of Greek architects had flown to Pakistan to work on the new capital. I had decided to join them as an engineer. Dr Mubashir asked him to persuade me to apply for a Fulbright so I could do my Masters from the US. So, I applied for a Fulbright.

I worked under architect John Terry as a trainee back then. He was a RIBA fellow, and had moved to Lahore after partition with his engineer partner. He liked Lahore and worked on a number of houses here. I worked with him to renovate the Punjab Club on Mall Road. He decided to pack up and leave to go back to the UK after a few years. We stayed in touch; he wrote to me when I was going for my Fulbright. John Terry even wrote a book on geometric patterns.”

He politely asks me if my chair is comfortable enough. I nod my head and smile; I appreciate how easy it is to talk to him.

“So, then you went for your Fulbright?”

“Yes”, he continues, “Then I went for my Fulbright. It was 1961. After I got to the States, Texas University gave all the Fulbright scholars an orientation. The Americans love giving orientations! That was also when I met Santosh – she converted to Islam later and we got married.

I had nine courses to take. We had to make sure we did not get more than one B, because otherwise we would not be considered acceptable candidates for a PhD. I got one B plus. However, after my Masters, I decided to enroll in the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign for the five-year architecture program.”

He laughs as he sees my astonishment. His phone rings once, but he puts it to the side. He points to the drawings on the walls of his rectangular office. I like how he brings out bits and pieces of information and then links everything together.

“Do you see this mosque? It is the Plainfield Mosque in Indiana, which I designed for the Islamic Society of North America, of which I was also a founding member. I took great care to design mosques creatively, because tackling gender segregation is a tricky task. Here is another mosque I designed in Vancouver. The concept behind the women’s section was from the shuttlecock burqa that my mother used to wear – when prayers end, women can crowd around the fenestrations on this wall to see whether their husbands have also come out.”

“After your architecture degree, you applied for a PhD?” I snake around to the list of questions I have.

“Yes. I did my PhD in the “Optimization of Structures”, which was a subject I found very intriguing. I remember walking down to the head of the architecture department later. The head of the department stood up and shook hands with me. He told me they had never had someone who had studied civil engineering at the graduate level, then an undergraduate degree in architecture, only to follow it with a paper on rectangular Kufic calligraphy that wins him gold.

I had a child by then, it was 1969. I needed a job and applied for several universities in Canada. Carlton University took me in – I have thirty-three years of experience from there.”

“What made you decide to come here and join BNU?”

“That is an interesting story. When I was teaching, a friend of mine Yasmeen Cheema, who was at the time doing her Master’s in restoration from Turkey, reached out to me about an article. The article was about reinventing Pakistan, and had been published in the Smithsonian magazine. I read about Navid Shehzad’s idea for BNU, as a liberal arts university that would give the students in Pakistan opportunities that were otherwise not available to them. The concept of reinventing Pakistan hit me so positively, that I decided to come and see what it was about. I’ll give you an illustrative example. If we hadn’t been the way we were back in 1947, maybe we would have been spared all the looting and massacre.”

“What would you like to say about Pakistan’s architecture schools? Especially after all that experience abroad, how do you think the schools of Pakistan compare?”

“There is no comparison. Canada as a nation, they are very demanding, they have built themselves from ground zero. They have gone through the experience of connecting one end of the Atlantic Ocean to the other end of the Pacific Ocean and then to the North Pole Sea by a railway that takes a couple of days to go all the way from Halifax to Vancouver. Canada has a few excellent architecture schools. Pakistanis as a people, sadly, have yet to grasp a very important concept. We need to work on our qualities ourselves, on our skills and we need to create a mindset that gears one towards growth as opposed to destructive confrontation.”

He points to another drawing. It is a round table that bulges in the center, supported by eight metal pipes. We stand up and make our way to the board that holds his drawings. Taking hold of a pencil, he begins sketching on the table top underneath.

“This table has been created so that the metal pipes will never move. They have been placed geometrically. If the top is taken off, they will all fall down. Here I will draw the front elevation; there is a ball placed on the top of every pipe which helps attach itself to the top. I always ask first year students what they think of the table and whether they think it is a good idea.”

“And do they ever give you a satisfactory answer?” I ask him as I stand and marvel at his sketch.

“They’re interested. They are willing to learn. That is the mindset we need to build, the one that Navid Shehzad wrote to reinvent. Pakistan has more schools than we need, and I’ve heard there are about a hundred schools that are operating without a license and they lie to their students. Building a reputation doesn’t happen just like that, it takes time. You cannot force it.”

I look at his bookshelves. He takes on the lead and begins talking about his books.

“I’ve donated my library to BNU. When I was moving from Canada, I had to pay sixteen thousand dollars to ship my books over to Pakistan. I asked Sartaj sahib, who was the founding Vice Chancellor and a man of great humor, whether he could chip in to pay for the shipping.

‘Gulzar sahib’, he said, ‘Why did you have to bring all your books? Bas do teen course ki kitaabein hi le atay!’ I laughed.”

“What, in your vast experience, do you think architecture is really about?”

“Architecture has no tongue. It has a language, but it does not speak. Architecture communicates very silently to the people, helps them immerse in it. It is like when you go swimming, and are surrounded completely by water. Some people talk about what architecture looks like, but that’s not how you approach architecture. You have a few who will look at Taj Mahal and say, ‘What is all this stone?’ There is a verse by Sahir Ludhiyanvi,

Ik shahansha ne daulat ka sahara le kr,

Ham ghareebon ki muhabbat ka uda dya mazaq

But that’s just it. Someone who writes a textbook, they can talk about what a window means to them in fancy words. But architecture is an experiential process. Architecture is, and I’ve said this before, silently eloquent. I’ve been lucky to experience Taj Mahal’s eloquence myself a few times.”

I thank him for his time and ask if I could take a picture of him. He obliges, and seems rather happy with the shot. Letting me know I am always welcome to see him, he tells me he looks forward to seeing the interview in print. I take my leave.