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Friday March 29, 2024

Region’s eminent architects descend on city as building products show opens

By Our Correspondent
February 29, 2020

The 16th International Exhibition of Building products, IAPEX 2020, organised by The Institute of Architects Pakistan’s Karachi chapter, commenced at the Karachi Expo Centre on Friday.

As in previous years, the three-day IAPEX event is showcasing traditional and contemporary building materials and finishes, hardware, building, home, décor, furniture, fixtures and fittings, garden tools and many other building and home-related products manufactured in Pakistan and internationally.

Running concurrently with the exhibition at the venue is the IAPEX Conference at which eminent architects of the region will be presenting their works.

Sindh Governor Imran Ismail inaugurated the event with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that marked the start of the exhibition as well as the IAPEX International Conference, attended by leading international and local architects.

Chairman IAP-Karachi chapter architecture Ramiz Baig in the opening speech said that IAPEX over the years had established itself as strong brand, originating in Karachi in 2004. He said that it was now held in all the four chapters nationwide and it was one of a kind building materials exhibition and conference. “IAPEX in Karachi is growing each year through the tremendous support of the building industry as well as the hard work of IAPEX committees both past and present. I am pleased to announce that this year we are booked to capacity in all three exhibition halls. The products on display cover all aspects of the building industry and are of excellent quality,” he said.

The conference, according to him, with its engaging theme ‘designing narratives’ boasts a who’s who of architectural and design talents from not only across the nation but from countries like Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Sweden. The conference session was started off by a presentation given by the Conference Sponsor City Tiles, which was followed by presentation from Sponsors Ghani Glass, Hospitality Sponsors Bluebird and Co-Sponsors Kale. “Once upon a time in a land far far away, on the other side of the Clifton, lived an architect who had great clients and contractors who were so nice to him and he lived happily ever after,” said Architecture Ejaz Ahed about himself in the session. The ability to define modern architecture, he said, had started to become very blurry.

“We really began to think that had modern art really finished,” he said and added that the main storyline of the architecture in the 20th century was of development and modernism and various reactions to it. Mostly, the term modern is referred to something of the time. By 1920s, he said that the term modern came to refer to particular approach by a group of architects who sought cast of historical precedent and develop something entirely new and different from their own time. Historical styles developed in the modern architects in response to irrelevant and potentially detergent architecture.

The architects in the 20th century continued the exploration of industrial revolution getting newer and experimental possibility with men and material. In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century in the western countries, he pointed out, it was common for architectures to revise historical styles such as classic and gothic. Ar. Leena Naqvi from Sweden also spoke to the session.

A University of Karachi student of the Visual Studies department had her project ‘A Human Power Plant in Thar’ displayed at the conference. In the sketch of the project, she defined how a community in Thar fetches water through human activities.

“Children while playing can extract water,” she said and showed how, through the seesaw, the water from the well directly goes to the reservoir from where animals can have water. From the swing, she showed that water flows towards the bath area. The exhibition and conference runs till Sunday, March 1.