• 1 In 1961, the United Nations labelled the 1960s the first Decade of Development and called on all m (...)

1As October approached, the extreme summer heat subsided. The slight chill in the air resonated with the icy political atmosphere—the changing season seemed to go hand in hand with the turning point in Pakistani history. In the first week of October 1958, eleven years after independence from colonial rule, two important events occurred. On October 6, classes began at the new National College of Arts, born from the ashes of the colonial mother institution, the Mayo School of Art. The following day, President Iskander Mirza abrogated the Constitution of Pakistan and declared martial law. As a result, General Ayub Khan, Commander in Chief of the Pakistan Army, became the nation’s leader for the next eleven years. Thus, both Pakistan and the NCA—their destinies linked by shared aid policies—were reborn in a climate of global change, marching together into the “Decade of Development.”1

• 2 Gustav F. Papanek, Pakistan’s Development: Social Goals and Private Incentives, Cambridge, MA: Har (...)
• 3 In his inaugural speech on January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy set the tone for his foreig (...)
• 4 David Webster, “Development advisors in a time of cold war and decolonization: the United Nations (...)
• 5 Duanfang Lu (ed.), Third-World Modernism: Architecture, Development and Identity, New York, NY: Ro (...)

2When Pakistan became independent on August 14, 1947, it inherited a plethora of problems. Faced with the herculean task of housing 20 million refugees despite its limited resources and inadequate infrastructure, the young country was immediately engulfed in turmoil. With no industry and a severe scarcity of raw materials, Pakistan faced an economic crisis. To make matters worse, the lack of stable leadership also led to serious political disorder. Thus, very early on, Pakistan was termed “an economic monstrosity,”2 making it an ideal candidate for the benefits of “international development.” After World War II, as colonial empires fell and the global power structure underwent upheaval, a new sense of direction in international affairs emerged, based on the notion of “development” and the “third world.” Propagated by the West, “development,” in the name of philanthropy, aimed to “break the bonds of mass misery and to help (the people of the third world) help themselves.”3 Attempts to replace the earlier models of economic exploitation and political dominance with new discourses and institutions of welfare and development established “new forms of diplomacy”4 and new dependencies.5 In the 1960s, rapidly expanding international organizations and development agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), UNESCO, the Colombo Plan, The Asia Foundation, The Fulbright Program, and the Ford Foundation all became key players in this new system of alliances.

• 6 Robert G. Wirsing, “Precarious Partnership: Pakistan’s Response to U.S. Security Policies,” Asian (...)
• 7 This was unlike newly independent India, where Nehruvian socialism oriented itself towards nationa (...)

4By the late 1950s, Pakistan had become “America’s most allied ally” when it came to containing Soviet expansion.6 As promised, the US reciprocated by providing 88% of all foreign aid to Pakistan for the development of the latter’s infrastructure and agriculture. It funded numerous mega-projects and sent in advisors; it also provided a wide range of military equipment. In exchange, the US was given extraterritorial rights, allowing it to set up a secret intelligence base near Peshawar. Pakistan even allowed the US to fly high-level spy missions over the Soviet Union from its territory.7

• 8 Markus Daechsel, Islamabad and the Politics of International Development in Pakistan, Cambridge; N (...)
• 9 Martino Stierli, Anoma Pieris and Sean Anderson (eds.), The Project of Independence: Architectures (...)
• 10 George F. Gant,“The Ford Foundation Program in Pakistan,” Annals of the American Academy of Politi (...)
• 11 Nadeem Omar Tarar, “Aesthetic Modernism in the Post-Colony: The Making of a National College of Ar (...)

5Consequently, the 11-year military regime of Gen. Ayub Khan was proclaimed Pakistan’s Golden Decade.8 Driven by an overarching desire for self-representation as well as an ambition to be part of a larger international conversation about modernity,9 the Ayub regime put on an enormous display of power. High-profile commissions and mega-projects in infrastructural, urban, and architectural development were conceived and accomplished, making Pakistan the poster child for global development. However, although financial aid had been instrumental in resolving the myriad issues Pakistan had inherited upon its birth, the Pakistan Planning Commission in collaboration with the Harvard Advisory Group identified the lack of technical expertise and the scarcity of local trained personnel as the biggest hindrance in fulfilling its Second Five Year Plan.10 To remedy the dearth of trained professionals, the Ayub Khan regime sought to invite foreign experts, advisors, and consultants to Pakistan to oversee mega-projects and provide instruction in technical education. In collaboration with the United States Technical Assistance & Productivity Program (TAP), the government planned for infrastructural development by commissioning foreign architects for mega-projects. It also invited specialists and academics to provide training to local students in modern design, theory, and technology. My research aims at identifying and understanding the complicated and often contradictory process of Pakistan’s decolonization in connection with the imported frameworks of knowledge in the structure and pedagogy of the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore during the formative years of the institution. The paper begins by building upon Nadeem Omar Tarar’s pioneering research11 on the formative years of the college, highlighting the historical context and the factual history of the foreign aid-funded knowledge economy and its consequent import of expertise at the National College of Arts. Subsequently, the research engages critically with the legacy of this expertise, to dissect the multi-layered process(es) of decolonization.

• 12 From Shakir Ali, Principal NCA to Naheed Khan, the United States Education Foundation (USEF) in Pa (...)
• 13 Conversion of MSA to NCA, Box File No. 238-E, Part I, Proposal for submission of development schem (...)

6The National College of Arts (NCA), formerly known as The Mayo School of Art (MSA), was established as a British Colonial Craft School in 1875 to serve the demands of craft production in the Punjab for the service of the colonial economy. With the primary objective of the MSA being to impart “instruction in various forms of craft-work in order to help the indigenous handicrafts and art industries of the Province by maintaining ancient traditions,”12 after independence there was a sense that the school was outdated. The Department of Industries prepared a reorganization scheme in 1956,13 and the MSA was restructured and converted into the National College of Arts (NCA) in October 1958. The “decolonization” process was more complex, due to this being a transition from the sphere of influence of one Western power (direct British colonization) to that of another (indirect US colonization). It is this process that my paper aims to decipher.

• 14 Jiat-Hwee Chang, A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience(...)
• 15 There were exceptions, like Rai Bahadur Kanhaya Lal and Ganga Ram in Lahore. Both rose to the posi (...)
• 16 Memorandum by H. H. Locke, July 26, 1873, in Official Chronicle of Mayo School of Art, p. 154, tak (...)
• 17 Ibid., p. 83-85.
• 18 Neelum Naz, “Development of Architectural Education in Pakistan: A Historical Perspective,” Global (...)
• 19 Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts Archives (NCAA), Box File No. 273-E, Conversion of the (...)
• 20 Ibid.
• 21 Report of the Commission on National Education (1958-1959). Lahore (Pakistan), National College of (...)
• 22 The NCA was transferred to the Department of Education in September 1960 but even then, it was und (...)
• 23 Nadeem Omar Tarar, The Colonial and National Formations of the National College of Arts, Lahore, o (...)
• 24 Development scheme proposals for the five-year plan, Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts A (...)
• 25 Conversion of MSA to NCA. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts Archives (NCAA), Box file no (...)
• 26 Conversion of MSA to NCA, Speech given by Mr. Akhtar Hussain at the NCA, February 1959. Lahore (Pa (...)

7In the colonial state, higher architectural education for the indigenous population had largely been restricted to the training of draftsmen, tracers, and subordinates14 to British architects and engineers. Architectural design was seen as a subsidiary field of study in schools of engineering, and the main goal of the curriculum was to prepare engineers for employment in the Public Works Department (PWD). Though the engineers from the PWD were often called upon to design buildings, the natives were usually deemed unfit for such jobs.15 Henry H. Locke, the first Principal of the Calcutta School of Art, went so far as to state that “the natives of this country who take degrees at our universities in engineering [...] for the purpose of entering our Public Works Department where they perform the work of builders rather than engineers [...] are frequently called upon to supply directions involving the working drawings and knowledge of architectural forms, which, I fear, very few of them possess.”16 Although Punjab University, Lahore had begun offering courses in engineering in 1873, little attention was given to advanced issues of formal aesthetics, architectural history, or theory. J. L. Kipling, MSA’s founding Principal, lamented that the curricula of these engineering courses lacked any reference to “Oriental” art and architecture.17 Thus, by 1904, the MSA introduced a formal architecture drafting program developed by Kipling himself. It focused on freehand drawing, carpentry, ornamental design, and the analysis of regional building traditions. These classes expanded to become the Architecture Department when the college was restructured in 1958. Prior to this restructuring, in 1954,18 another architecture school, the Government School of Architecture (GSA), had been established in Karachi by one of Pakistan’s eminent first-generation architects, Mehdi Ali Mirza, in collaboration with the Public Works Department. However, given its already established reputation, the NCA attracted far more students. It rapidly moved to the forefront of the country’s art and architecture instruction. Over 75 years after independence, the NCA is a key starting point for researchers seeking to decipher the identity of Pakistani architectural practice and where it stands today. In the restructuring process of the MSA to the NCA, the vision, curriculum, and pedagogy were updated and modernized as part of the national transition from a traditional craft-oriented approach to a modern design-oriented philosophy.19 The MSA was as deeply scarred as the rest of the country in the aftermath of partition. More than half of the school population had consisted of Hindu and Sikh faculty, students, and staff. They had all migrated to India at the time of independence, leaving the school dragging on structureless, awaiting orders to shut down. However, the topmost priority of General Ayub Khan’s military regime was the promotion of the spirit of modernization in the development of the new nation state by reforming educational institutions under the new foreign assistance program.20 Within three months of taking power, General Ayub Khan inaugurated a National Commission on Education to develop a plan for “a re-organization and re-orientation of the existing educational system so as to evolve a national system, which would better reflect our spiritual, moral, and cultural values.”21 Pakistan was one of the top five recipients of foreign aid. Nevertheless, most of the funding was funnelled to sectors requiring more urgent attention, like socio-economic and infrastructural development, instead of art education, which was deemed less important. For this very reason, the case of the National College of Art is unique. It was placed under the umbrella of the Ministry of Industries and Commerce rather than Education, hence qualifying for aid as a technical institute,22 of which only six remained in the country.23 As the oldest such institution,24 it was felt to have the potential to resolve the country’s technical shortfalls. In fact, the NCA stated its main educational objective which was “to coordinate all visual arts and train talented young people to meet the growing demand for designers, architects, and painters in industry, trade, and culture”25 and to play an important part in the “development of the national economy.”26 The need for trained personnel was viewed as most acute in the field of architectural education, and the NCA became a prime contender for the influx of foreign assistance.

• 27 The Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific was conce (...)

8With the support of various bodies like the Fulbright Program, the Colombo Plan27 and the Asia Foundation, foreign scholars and teachers were designated to impart modern knowledge to the local students. Three full-fledged Departments of Fine Arts, Design and Architecture were established. The Fulbright Program, the primary source of foreign expertise at the NCA, arranged the appointment of Professor Mark Ritter Sponenburgh (1958-61), an American Fulbright Research Fellow, as the school’s Principal leading all necessary upgrades.

• 28 The author consulted Sponenburgh’s personal files at the Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Ar (...)

9Sponenburgh had a background in the fine arts. He had taught sculpture at the University of Oregon (1946-56) and worked as a visiting professor at the Royal College of Art in London before embarking on his position in Pakistan. He had also spent some time studying and teaching art in Egypt. During World War II, Sponenburgh had been a part of the MFAA (the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program) in charge of sorting, cataloguing, and eventual restitution of the enormous collection art looted by the Nazis. Thus, Sponenburgh brought his extensive experience in the arts and academia to the conception of a vision for the NCA including the following essential features:28

• 29 Syllabus of the NCA 1958-59. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts Archives (NCAA) Box file (...)
• 30 M.R. Sponenburgh Personal Box File no. 293-E (Part I, II & III). Lahore (Pakistan), National Colle (...)
• 31 Conversion of MSA to NCA, A brief note on the NCA. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts Arc (...)
• 32 Annual Convocation Report of the National College of Arts (Part I & II), 1959-61. Lahore (Pakistan (...)

14To achieve these goals, the college designed a “fundamental program.” It was the armature of the education, to be mandatory and completed in its entirety the first year by all students, in every department. It provided equal emphasis on the subjects of design, freehand drawing, scale drawing and drafting, modeling and carving, basic science, language and literature, and an introduction to the visual arts.29 Sponenburgh believed that “the strength of and the promise of the college were to be found in all of the disciplines working not just side by side, but together.”30 The idea, as established by Sponenburgh in a note on the NCA, “was to go beyond technical instruction in placing emphasis on creative thought and action. Each department was to have its own character in relation to the basic disciplines; however, the departments were to work in close collaboration in order to develop in each student an awareness of the essential unity of the visual arts–both traditional and contemporary.”31 For the faculty, the unity and coordination of all the courses was of utmost importance: “an architecture student who is not attuned to aesthetic frequencies is likely to be little more than a partially trained engineer in disguise. A student in industrial design who has not been exposed to the fine arts on one side and humanities on the other will be less apt to meet the multifarious requirements of his intended profession.”32

• 33 Library books and Correspondence. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts Archives (NCAA) Box (...)
• 34 Nadeem Omar Tarar, The Colonial and National Formations of the National College of Arts, Lahore, o (...)

15Of course, Sponenburgh was not alone in conceptualizing the curriculum and pedagogy. The teaching faculty, both foreign and local, conceived the ethos and workings of the new institution. The NCA received generous assistance from the Asia Foundation in terms of foreign faculty, visiting fellowships, and scholarships for students. Visual materials including books, journals, and maps were donated through the Asia Foundation’s “Books for Asian Students” program aimed at alleviating the severe shortage of reference and textbooks in Pakistan.33 The German Cultural Center, the Colombo Plan, and the United States Educational Foundation (USEF) also contributed a large number of books, journals, magazines, and visual aid materials, making up the initial collection of the NCA library. The USEF steered the development of the NCA by coordinating and supporting the visits of American and European teachers on short contracts. Kochi Takita, a Japanese artist, took charge of Ceramics in the Design Department (1960-61); Professor James Warren, a Canadian designer, organized and headed the newly created Design Department (1960-62); and Dr Wallace Spencer Baldinger, a Professor from the School of Architecture and Allied Arts at Oregon University, was in charge of lecturing on the History of Art and Architecture (1960-61). Professor J. Palmer Boggs, an MIT graduate in Architectural Engineering and previously the head of architecture at Oklahoma University, became the Head of the Architecture Department and taught courses in Structural Design (1960-62). After his departure, Professor Harold Benson, a Harvard graduate in Architectural Design, was recruited and appointed as the head of the Department of Architecture (1962-63). Mary Lewis, a Fulbright lecturer in sculpture, contributed to the teaching at the Fine Arts Department (1958-60).34

• 35 Ali had acquired a variety of experiences, having studied at the J.J School of Art in Bombay and t (...)
• 36 Visiting Lecturers at the National College of Arts (1958-1962), Lahore (Pakistan), National Colleg (...)
• 37 In the aftermath of colonialism, even today, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) gives more cred (...)
• 38 Sponenburgh’s official notice to all Instructors and Demonstrators, July 9, 1958. Lahore (Pakistan (...)
• 39 Annual Convocation Report of the National College of Arts (Part I & II), 1959-1961, Lahore (Pakist (...)

16It was not only foreign experts who were leading the change at the NCA. Sponenburgh made sure he engaged local artists and academics as well. Professor Shakir Ali, renowned in the Pakistani Modern Art movement,35 took over as the first Pakistani principal after Sponenburgh’s departure in 1961. He was made incharge of heading the Fine Arts Department, where Jamila Zafar, the first Pakistani female artist to graduate from the Slade School of Art, taught drawing. Abbassi Akhtar, a design graduate from the Central School of Arts & Crafts, London, and the first female staff member, took charge of the fundamental program.36 Although an informal hierarchy held local faculty trained in abroad in higher esteem than locally trained artisans,37 Sponenburgh considered the master craftsmen from the Mayo School as assets, and engaged them as instructors. Shortly after assuming his duties, he issued an official notice in response to rumours that the new scheme would eliminate the local craftsmen. He assured them “I have great respect for the fine craftsmen of this college and I fully intend to keep all those whose services have been requisitioned for in the new scheme. I shall continue to support the loyal and industrious members of the college staff.”38 One such artist was the widely celebrated miniature painter Haji Muhammad Sharif, who had joined the MSA in 1951 and continued to teach miniature painting under the Sponenburgh regime. Other local teachers like Ustaad Latif Chughtai, Niaz Ali Shah, and Ustaad Bashir ud Din acted as drawing instructors. Simultaneously, young local teachers were given opportunities for foreign training in collaboration with the foreign aid agencies. One such young faculty member was Qadir Bukhsh Khan, who was sent to the UK for advanced training in industrial design in collaboration with the Asia Foundation.39

• 40 Iram Zia Raja, “Shakir Ali, an Enigma within a Layered Reality,” Pakistan Perspectives, vol. 22, n (...)
• 41 Duanfang Lu (ed.), Third-World Modernism, op. cit. (note 5), p. 5.
• 42 Annual Convocation Report of the National College of Arts (Part I & II), 1959-1961. Lahore (Pakist (...)
• 43 Omar Nadeem, “Aesthetic Modernism in the Post-Colony,” op. cit. (note 11), p. 337
• 44 Exhibition catalogue. Salem, OR (United States), Willamette University, Willamette University Arch (...)

17As the mastermind of the new art school, Sponenburgh wanted it to be based on a Bauhaus ethos,40 integrating the fine arts, indigenous crafts, and modern technology. The Bauhaus model was closely associated with the idea of establishing a Werkbund where artists worked with architects, designers, and industrialists to improve the global competitiveness of national industry by combining mass production techniques with traditional crafts.41 This approach was ideally suited to Pakistan’s situation: at the crucial point of establishing and planning the future of its industry. Instilling the ideology of this alliance between the industry and indigenous crafts in student artists, designers, and architects could be seen as pioneering a way for the national industry to decolonize, modernize, and thrive. To stress the importance and inclusion of indigenous crafts and skills in the curriculum, Sponenburgh wrote, “It should be pointed out that although many of the recommendations appearing in this report would point the college more in the direction of design than of arts and crafts per se, every effort should be made to preserve traditional indigenous arts and skills. Indeed, the college should be a citadel for defending and encouraging such traditional disciplines as miniature painting and calligraphy, for these might otherwise pass out of existence.”42One practical step in this direction was the introduction of a joint fieldwork project conducted by the staff members and students of all three departments in the summer of 1960. Based in Northern Pakistan, the project culminated with an ethnographic exhibition of the Folk Arts of Swat, the first of its kind and sponsored by a generous grant from the Asia Foundation. A team of students and faculty conducted photographic surveys, prepared measured drawings, documented rubbings and paintings, and collected samples of woodcrafts, jewelry, textiles, basketry, and paintings.43 In the introductory note of the exhibition pamphlet, Sponenburgh stated: How can this regional art persist in the course of economic development and social change? Folk art grows out of the soul of a people, and to the minds which produce and live amongst these forms, all other forms are alien. Any kind of artificial cultivation that may be motivated by a desire to ‘adjust’ or to ‘improve’ the basic good taste and healthy artistic instincts of the peasantry is bound to hasten the processes of decay that are already in evidence. As a measure of cultural conservation, therefore, the National College of Arts, Lahore has taken independent initiative in originating an index of indigenous design with a view to recording, collecting and documenting a visual tradition of which Pakistan can be justly proud.44

• 45 Legislation passed in September 1955 merged the four provinces of West Pakistan (West Punjab, Sind (...)
• 46 “West Pakistan as One Unit”: Text of the prime minister Muhammad Ali Bogra’s broadcast to the nati (...)
• 47 Sadia Toor, The State of Islam, op. cit. (note 46), p. 80.

18This pluralist vision was critical at a time of political unrest amidst the amalgamation of West Pakistan45 into a “One Unit” scheme in 1955, the purpose of which was to promote national unity and ensure there would be “no Bengalis, no Punjabis, no Sindhis, no Pathans, no Baluchis, no Bahawalpuris, no Khairpuris.” The “disappearance” of these identities was supposed to “strengthen the integrity of Pakistan.”46 The policy had enraged various ethnic groups, especially the Bengalis in East Pakistan, due to increasing regional inequality.47 The NCA’s pluralist vision can also be seen as the first of many instances in which the school defined its own vision and identity, independent of that of the state.

• 48 Reports of the National College of Arts (1959-1962). Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts A (...)
• 49 Development Scheme for the NCA, 1973-1976. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts Archives (N (...)
• 50 Iram Zia Raja, “Shakir Ali, an Enigma within a Layered Reality,” op. cit. (note 40).

19The Swat Folk Art exhibition was so successful that it travelled to Karachi in May 1961 where it was hosted by the Pakistan American Cultural Center. It was followed by research focusing on Cholistan in Sindh, in 1961-62, which also gave rise to a unique collection of regional craftwork. Both shows traveled to London in 1965 as part of the Pakistan pavilion at the inauguration of the Commonwealth Institute.48 Their popularity established a tradition for similar mega documentation projects in subsequent years. There was pioneering research on Sindh in 1962; extensive fieldwork on Balochistan in 1963-64; and later the Uch Sharif Project and Chitral Bazaar documentation, among many more. Through these projects, the NCA contributed significantly to the awareness, popularization and the cultural preservation of Pakistani folk heritage. Because indigenous culture was one of the pillars of Sponenburgh’s education policy, it was an influential factor in other NCA research projects such as an in-depth nationwide survey of socio-economic conditions in rural areas and traditional styles of settlement and building construction, conducted by the Architecture Department in 1972.49For Sponenburgh and the faculty under him, it was important for the NCA to be a well-rounded institution grounded in indigenous aesthetics, materials, and skill resources, yet guided by the emerging modern trends in art and industrial and architectural design.50

• 51 Scheme for the development of Architecture Department. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts (...)
• 52 Development scheme proposals for Five-year plan. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts Archi (...)
• 53 Sponenburgh’s explicit endorsement of a program leaning towards international standards (i.e., Ame (...)

20A “humanistic” curriculum intended to balance creative and technical education was meticulously developed. Architectural education at the NCA was envisioned as a harmonious blend of the vital aspects of architectural design—the structural, the functional, and the aesthetic. Although the program progressed through a series of technical levels in order to prepare students to be productive employees at architectural firms, equal emphasis was placed on courses dispensed by the departments of art and design, so as to achieve a holistic approach to building design, combining the technical and the aesthetic.51 All of the NCA’s departments raised student admission standards. To qualify, would-be trainees had to hold intermediate qualifications (higher secondary school completion) instead of the previously established requisite which was a matriculate degree (secondary school completion) for admission in the various crafts programs at the Mayo School of Art.52 The NCA program aimed for a higher level of instruction “to meet the degree standards in schools of architecture and design in American and British universities.”53 Moreover, the architecture program was radically re-evaluated. The curriculum was divided into four main streams: design, theory, construction and practice. Professor J. Palmer Boggs, the first head of the architecture department, wrote:

• 55 Annual Convocation Report of the National College of Arts (Part I & II), 1959-1961. Lahore (Pakist (...)
• 56 Sponenburgh explicitly uses the pronouns “he” and “him” while describing future urban planner. Tho (...)
• 57 Scheme for the development of architecture department at the NCA. Lahore (Pakistan), National Coll (...)
• 58 Ibid., p. 38.

21To meet an urgent need for qualified town planners, a postgraduate degree in Town Planning was also developed, in collaboration with the United Nations Expanded Program of Technical Assistance.55 Trained professionals were necessary to work on the development of Pakistan’s new capital, Islamabad, on industrial zones, and on low-cost housing for the masses. The stated goal of the proposed postgraduate program was “to broaden the scope of the specialist (the engineer, the economist, and the architect) so as to provide him with an understanding of the complex problems of human organization and to enable him to plan and program intelligently in the best interest of this nation’s future growth and development.”56 Despite the NCA’s modernist ethos and openness to global trends, Sponenburgh, in his annual convocation report, claimed that the students were also taught about indigenous building materials and encouraged to apply them in professional practice. However, the curriculum at that time contains absolutely no explicit mention of such a course. The closest example is the instruction offered in “Measured Drawings of the Monuments of Pakistan”57 in the architectural design stream. It prompts us to wonder about the selection criteria for the monuments, which might have included iconic imperial Mughal and Colonial structures. However, it seems to be a rather superficial way of looking at the buildings, one that disregards the approach centered on people and indigenous methods and techniques. The curriculum also included a course named “Village and City Planning”58 to be taught in the fourth year. Again, the question arises how foreign experts with little or no understanding of the realities of local villages and cities would teach it. Clearly, they would be more likely to teach their own expertise: Western trends in city planning. Rapid industrial growth at this time drove migration from rural areas to urban areas, changing the face of the cities in the developing world. The Western world had undergone these changes at least 50 years earlier, though, so the two urban realities were very different. Therefore, there is still some question as to whether indigenous methods and techniques, although emphasized on paper in the vision of the college and in speeches, were actually being taught. The curriculum is clearly ambiguous on the subject. It is also worth mentioning that, unlike the other departments, where local teachers were more substantially involved, the architecture department had very few local instructors. The few they did have were junior faculty members who had no say in shaping the curriculum, which was developed by the foreign faculty. They did so to the best of their abilities. But due to their limited knowledge of the context, the curriculum was lopsided, leaning West. Nevertheless, it fulfilled the demands of the state, primarily for technical assistance on a par with global standards. This had a decisive impact on the direction architectural practice took in Pakistan in the formative years, and where it stands today.

• 59 Conversion of MSA to NCA. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts Archives (NCAA), Box file no (...)

22The curricula of other departments were more closely aligned with the local context. For example, in the newly established Design Department, courses taught students the tools and processes traditionally employed by local craftsmen. As a result, they were better equipped to design economically.59

• 60 Annual Convocation Report of the National College of Arts (Part I & II), 1959-61. Lahore (Pakistan (...)
• 61 Ibid.
• 62 Excerpt from the minutes of meeting of the governor’s advisory council held on March 5, 1962. Laho (...)
• 63 The government department in charge of implementing the nationwide economic and development plans (...)
• 64 Notice from Civil and Military Gazette. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts Archives (NCAA (...)

23Sponenburgh mentioned he had to operate under “considerable hardships.” The bureaucracy was uncooperative, constantly hindering the carefully crafted plans of the foreign experts with “booby traps and supposedly inevitable roadblocks.”60 The Pakistani government had little appreciation for and comprehension of instruction in art and design. For example, the 1960 report by the Education Commission lumped art together with sports,61 further exasperating the NCA faculty. From early on, it was clear that the goals of the government and the foreign experts did not align. Whereas the government wanted to use the NCA as a tool in its plan for nationalism and nation building, Sponenburgh envisioned it as much more than that—a centre of excellence of the arts. By 1961, Sponenburgh was so frustrated with the constant interference from Pakistani officialdom that he resigned, along with James Warren. The two men did not wait for the expected contract extension and therefore left before the first class of students had graduated from the program. Shakir Ali, who succeeded Sponenburgh as Principal of the NCA, pleaded with the government to persuade Sponenburgh to return. However, there was no significant response from either the government or Sponenburgh.62 Sponenburgh had been driven to resign by the government, and especially the unfortunate ministry that had authority over the college, which never took the role of the NCA seriously. The Planning and Development Sector63 argued that a college that was not affiliated with a university and that did not lead to a university degree would not attract sufficient attention from foreign aid agencies. To remedy the situation, the government proposed a merger whereby the NCA architecture department would be amalgamated into the proposed technical university (West Pakistan University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore) scheduled to open by 1962. The other two departments would be handed over to the Punjab University, and the NCA college building would be given to the museum for expansion.64 In other words, the NCA was about to be dismantled.

• 65 Letters from Sponenburgh, minutes of meeting of advisory committee NCA. Lahore (Pakistan), Nationa (...)
• 66 Interview with Iqbal Hasan, conducted by NCA Archives in 2019.
• 67 Interview with Javed Najm (later a professor in the Department of Architecture) by Rabia Ezdi, Feb (...)

24Sponenburgh lobbied for self-governing rights,65 to no avail. As soon as the student body, not more than eighty at the time, heard that the government had decided to shut down the NCA, they protested with strikes, rallies, and letters to the editors of national newspapers.66 The Design Department made banners and plaques. The demonstrations made the government nervous and the NCA was saved.67

• 68 Letter from the Director of Technical Education to Secretary, Education Department, October 26, 19 (...)
• 69 Ibid.
• 70 Shakir Ali’s urgent letter to Dr. Akmal Hussain, adviser to the Education Department. , Box File 1 (...)

25However, even though the government scrapped the scheme to dismantle the NCA, their next proposal ignored the vision of the school. The NCA was to be developed as a polytechnical institute, offering short courses in industrial design. The five-year program in architecture would be eliminated, shortened to a three-year course preparing students to become architectural assistants. The post-graduate degrees in architecture and town planning the faculty had been working on were to be transferred to the West Pakistan University of Engineering and Technical, Lahore (UET). The bureaucracy, having no experience in art education and ignoring all the hard work that the experts had done for the past three years, issued orders to develop the NCA as an institute of industrial design to suit the Pakistani government plan to train students for industry.68 By late 1961, the NCA was transferred from the Department of Industries to the Education Department. It was also decided that the college would operate as a semi-autonomous body under the guidance of its board of governors.69 Financial support for teaching the arts at the NCA had dried up. The following year, the faculty of the Architecture Department consisted of a single lecturer (who was qualified as an engineer, not an architect). Assistant professorships were vacant, and the department lacked a permanent head70 until Prof. Harold Benson, sponsored by the Fulbright program, joined in late 1962 for one academic year. Due to the dearth of qualified faculty, he taught all three senior classes. Finally, when the first class graduated in 1963, the NCA hired some of the graduates for teaching positions. Eventually, the school became self-reliant.

• 71 Each contract was for one year. Some contracts were extended for a second year. The only foreigner (...)
• 72 Iram Zia Raja, “Shakir Ali, an Enigma within a Layered Reality,” op. cit. (note 40).

26Due to the government’s short-term, unstable agendas, funding was patchy, and foreign experts didn’t stay long.71 However, it is important to note that the timing was crucial. These professors and foreign experts helped found an institution committed to interdisciplinary merging of the arts, along with critical thinking and analysis of the role of the arts in Pakistan. Although funding and development in general might have yielded political benefits to all the parties involved, these experts and academics played a vital role in fostering an environment of experimental and interdisciplinary knowledge exchange and discourse, in which complex and difficult processes of decolonization could safely unfold and continue. The NCA program emphasized the development of creative, independent thinkers for Pakistan’s future. The foreign experts laid the groundwork for the school, designing the administrative framework, planning the educational philosophy, developing the curriculum, purchasing the necessary equipment, and planning the expansion of the campus. They responsibly made a range of decisions relative to the future of the NCA, based on the demands of the national and international markets.72 The significant contribution made by these experts can still be felt today in the workings of the college. They passed along their commitment to the first Pakistani department heads, teachers, and students. Empowered by the creative and critical skills instilled in them at the NCA, they became the torchbearers of the Pakistani art scene, able to further develop themselves and set the future course for the institution.

• 73 “Architectural Expertise and the Coloniality of Knowledge: Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni in Conversation (...)

30Taking all this into account, the college’s founding years, when foreign scholars played a crucial role, can be taken as a prelude to the actual process of decolonization, eventually begun by local teachers and students and still continuing today. When an entity frees itself from the structure of dependencies on outside bodies and becomes self-reliant, decolonization can be said to be progressing.73 However, even though the NCA was set up by foreign experts, because the program endowed students with the necessary skills to stand on their own feet, the dependency central to colonial domination began to crumble.

• 74 John Lockwood Kipling, the first Principal of the Mayo School of Art from 1875-1893, a cult figure (...)
• 75 Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa: Turning Over a New (...)

32Nevertheless, although the contributions made by foreign experts must be acknowledged, it is even more important not to romanticize the notion of the white man as the savior. Regardless of their good intentions, these scholars came from a place of privilege, as authority figures. Over the years, historians of the NCA have tended to magnify founders like J. L. Kipling74 and Mark Sponenburgh, depicting them as heroes who swooped in and saved the “natives.” Arguably, this tendency arises from the dangerous “cognitive empire” or “empire of the mind” identified by Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni.75 Although the colonized are no longer physically controlled by the West, cognitive imperialism insidiously subjugates their minds, imposing inferiorization and dependency. Both Kipling and Sponenburgh set a course for the NCA that empowered students and the younger faculty, nonetheless the foreign scholars were still pawns in a game of power and hegemony. The NCA narrative cannot be centred on singular figures. The making of the Mayo School of Art and then the National College of Art were both collaborative endeavors.

• 76 Ibid., p. 7.
• 77 In 1940, women were admitted only to the Fine Arts Department of the Punjab University, across the (...)
• 78 Later known as Yasmin Cheema (her married name). She became one of Pakistan’s most renowned archit (...)
• 79 Scheme for the development of Architecture Department at the NCA, United Nations Expanded Program (...)

33A decolonial approach is concerned with deconstructing existing hierarchies, with a particular focus on amplifying previously devalued voices or systems. In this regard, the decolonization movement seems still to be haunted by the gender question. Males dominate the struggles for decolonization, reinforcing the patriarchal roots of the coloniality of power. The notion of the male savior, either European or native,76 predominates. This patriarchal bias must consciously and actively be revised to bring forth hitherto concealed voices, decolonizing established facts and yielding new knowledge. Under the colonial system, the Mayo School of Art focused on the demands of craft production, specifically in the Punjab. It restricted admission to male Punjabi students, preferably from a certain social class.77 However, the restructuring of the National College of Arts demanded the inclusion of diverse voices. Underrepresented groups like female students and teachers, especially in the architecture department (architecture being a highly male oriented field), were magnified. The first female student, Yasmin Tufail Ahmed,78 joined in 1962 and was the only woman in the department for the next 5 years. As time went on, the department started hiring dynamic female architects as instructors, including Yasmin Tufail. However, it has been a long struggle, because the architecture faculty positions that were advertised or requested from the various foreign funding bodies in the early years of the department all stipulated “men only.”79 This type of prejudice obviously impacted female input in the pedagogy of the department in the formative years.

• 80 Interview of Masood Ahmad Khan who joined NCA as an Architecture student in 1960, conducted by the (...)

34As a federal government institution, the NCA had to operate under the quota system: a certain number of places were reserved for applicants from different parts of the country (provinces, areas, and rural or underdeveloped regions of Pakistan). This automatically resulted in an environment where knowledge was pluralized by the diversity of the student body and faculty. In addition to students from underrepresented areas of the country, scholars came to the NCA from East Pakistan, Nepal, and even Palestine, forming a rich learning community.80

• 81 Toma Berlanda, “Decolonising architectural education: thoughts from cape town,” Built Heritage, vo (...)

37The legacy of the Western expert is still visible. Curricula are modeled chiefly on those in European or American universities, and a large proportion of faculty has had overseas experience. Coupled with the fact that the initial cohort of the staff had to be trained in foreign institutions, this has created a self-referential mold that resists alteration.81 The Pakistani Higher Education Commission (HEC) reinforces the Western bias, rewarding foreign qualified faculty with better salaries and higher positions even today. Precisely because the plural nature of experts and architectural knowledge have never been acknowledged, the curricula are alienated from the contemporary context.

• 82 Kamil Khan Mumtaz had an interesting personal trajectory. He was trained as a modernist and is now (...)
• 83 Kamil Khan Mumtaz, “A Search for Architecture Based on Appropriate Technology,” paper presented at (...)
• 84 Zarminae Ansari, A Contemporary Architectural Quest and Synthesis: Kamil Khan Mumtaz in Pakistan, (...)
• 85 Development Scheme for the NCA, 1973-76. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Arts Archives (NCA (...)
• 86 Toma Berlanda, “Decolonising architectural education: thoughts from cape town,” op. cit. (note 81) (...)

38In the years after the expats left, the program underwent revisions. In 1972-73, the architecture department revised its curriculum, under the supervision of Principal, Prof. Shakir Ali and Kamil Khan Mumtaz.82 Mumtaz, hired to head the architecture department in 1966 when he was 27, brought a diverse global experience to the task. After completing his degree in Tropical Architecture from the AA School, in London, in 1963, Kamil Khan Mumtaz joined the Kumasi School of Architecture in Ghana as a lecturer. He was part of a global group of experts invited when the college was restructured, in much the same way as the NCA. During his two-year stint in Kumasi, Mumtaz worked with Buckminster Fuller and Keith Critchlow, both of whom had a deep influence on his work,83 while simultaneously learning from the context of newly independent Ghana. Revising the architecture curricula for the NCA, Mumtaz modeled the department on his experience at the AA.84 The curricula stayed abreast of global trends in climate design, with subjects like “environmental studies and control” becoming important. Sociology and economics also became core subjects in architectural education at the NCA, starting as early as the second year.85 These innovations were a major step towards recognizing that education for sustainability implies that the architect’s fundamental responsibility is an ethical one. The educator must be committed to empowering students to develop responsive architectural solutions to the social, economic, and environmental realities facing the built environment.86

• 87 Hannah Le Roux, “Comfort, Violence, Care: Decolonising Tropical Architecture at Blida, 1956,” ABE (...)
• 88 Zarminae Ansari, A Contemporary Architectural Quest and Synthesis: Kamil Khan Mumtaz in Pakistan, (...)

39However, the fact that Mumtaz based his revisions on his degree in Tropical Architecture can be seen as problematic. Tropical architecture had been relegated to a “building science.” It spread via trade publications for technical advisors and international students pulled together by architects on their return to locales conducive to that kind of work. With this normalization, the subject of comfort became comfortable, completely dissociated from design experimentation.87 After leaving the NCA in 1980, Mumtaz admitted that these internationalized principles could not be superimposed at home, due to totally different socio-economic realities88 that the courses had ignored completely. Modernist curricula based on Western models could not be adopted without a deeper understanding of the context. Thus, through self-critique and understanding of his own context, Mumtaz made a decisive change in his ideology, gradually coming to reject the universal solutions in the modernist school.

• 89 Omar Nadeem, “Aesthetic Modernism in the Post-Colony,” op. cit. (note 11), p. 337.
• 90 Ibid.

40Sponenburgh’s Bauhaus-inspired vision for the school is clear from some of his proposals for the design research studio. It was to “experiment with the indigenous materials of the country and to help revive and revitalise the traditional arts and crafts.”89 For this, the Swat fieldwork and its subsequent exhibition was deemed the “first step to compile an index of Pakistani Design similar to the American Index of Design.”90 While the exhibition was a great contribution in the dissemination of knowledge of indigenous crafts and culture, a critique of its methodology is necessary. The modernist trajectory’s bias towards the rationalization of indigenous traditions is itself problematic. That is, documentation and the subsequent simplification of indigenous knowledge in Westernized data bases was not totally dissimilar to the colonizer’s enterprise prior to exploiting the land, resources, and labor.

• 91 Robert Brown and Daniel Maudlin, “Concepts of Vernacular Architecture,” in C. Greig Crysler, Steph (...)
• 92 Salem, OR (United States), Williamette University, Williamette University Archives, Mark Sponenbur (...)
• 93 Robert Brown and Daniel Maudlin, “Concepts of Vernacular Architecture,” op. cit. (note 91), p. 342

41It is also important to note that the vernacular is a statement of the totality of human values and activities through artifact and building. Thus, these elements—whether made of stone, timber, mud, or tin—are not simply exemplars of the modernist tenet that “form follows function.” Instead, they are a spatial constitution of complex social and cultural relations.91 To view them from a modernist standpoint alone diminishes their nuances and depth. Consequently, teaching through the modernist lens is also questionable. In the Asia Foundation brochure92 introducing the traveling exhibition, Sponenburgh discusses the culture and political division of Swat. However, it was largely omitted from both the documentation and the curation of the exhibition. In fact, the objects were displayed virtually as romanticized “folk art”: out of context, in the absence of any reference to their intangible aspects. Furthermore, Sponenburgh referred to the work as “primitive” countless times throughout the brochure, again relegating it to the backwaters of mainstream architectural discourse. It became “the other,” located in a series of oppositions–the archaic versus the modern, the traditional versus the innovative, low culture (in this case primitive) versus high culture.93 Erecting barriers like these, still a common Western-centric practice today, restricts our understanding, narrows discourse, and reinforces existing bias and preconceptions.

• 94 Taking over building occupied by research lab, 1959-62. Lahore (Pakistan), National College of Art (...)
• 95 Interview with Nayyar Ali Dada by Asim Noon, August 3, 2022.

42The NCA campus, hitherto situated within the physicality of the earlier colonial school’s context, needed expansion in its formative years. In 1961, under Sponenburgh’s directorate, the new Design Department block was added, as the result of a collaboration between the Public Works Department (PWD), the Building & Roads Department, West Pakistan, and the consulting architect, A. R. Hye, who eventually designed the building.94 The modest four- story block, featuring airy, light-filled studios, was designed in local red brick to match the NCA’s colonial-era structures. Prof. Boggs, the head of the architecture department, made small changes and revisions to Hye’s plans. The block was criticized for lacking creative expression and merely replicating the “frills of its colonial context.”95 Perhaps, if the faculty had been more actively involved in the design process, the new building would have been less disappointing.

• 96 Ibid. The new spirit, new materials, and new technology were the buzz of the day.
• 97 Martino Stierli, Anoma Pieris and Sean Anderson (eds.), The Project of Independence: Architectures (...)

44It is important to note that in a space so dominated by its colonial identity due to its Indo-Saracenic buildings, the addition of modernist buildings designed by alumni democratized the campus and advanced the process of decolonization. Consider the Brutalist auditorium building: it contrasts not only with its Indo-Saracenic surroundings due to the use of concrete, but also in its form. It provokes a new space for open, genuine discussion. The design process was shaped by both global and local frames of reference. Globally, it expressed the zeitgeist, a sense of transnational modernity.96 Yet it was also rooted in the specificity of the local place.97 A heavy emphasis was placed on the context by designing the auditorium and its stairs to merge into the colonial sculpture courtyard. The courtyard was the campus commons with areas where students were free to socialize and connect. It was a more democratic area, being outside the confines of the studio space and also away from the formal administrative areas (opening onto the fountain courtyard). Additional expansion in the 1990s, with the creation of the new architecture block and its informal courtyard added more of such democratic spaces to the campus.

• 98 The National College of Arts Archives (NCAA) were established in 1999 to mark the school’s 125th a (...)

46A decolonial approach draws upon multiple knowledge systems in order to integrate a range of perspectives and to uncover data that might previously been concealed. The establishment of the NCA Archives in 2000 to mark the 125th anniversary of the school’s creation is particularly significant in this regard. Nadeem Omar Tarar, who was in charge of the project in its initial stages, described the grueling process of preserving and organizing the “vast corpus of unkempt records of the college administration since its inception as the Mayo School of Art.”98 More than two decades later, the cataloguing and digitizing of old institutional records is a noteworthy accomplishment. It has made formerly confidential files accessible to scholars and academics, paving the way for the deconstruction process. Systems which might previously have been devalued, like traditional crafts and music, were brought back to light. Pakistani classical music is studied in a new Department of Musicology; there is a separate stream for miniature painting in the Fine Arts department. The aim was not only to instill an appreciation for such long established traditional art forms, and preserve them, but to re-evaluate their place in today’s contemporary setting.

• 99 Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Decolonization, Development and Knowledge in Africa, op. cit. (note 75) (...)

47Although the decolonization process envisions another possible world, with different ethics of living together,99 it is important to understand that the road to it is multi-layered and winding, full of stops and starts, without any fixed end point. In my thesis, deciphering the legacy of the foreign expertise and emergent decolonization processes at the National College of Arts, the path and pattern of growth are seen to be non-linear. The decolonial efforts and their outcomes appear in small spurts. Nearly invisible at first, they do apparently align in one direction when viewed later, from above. However, that does not mean the process is completed. It is simply a sign that the decolonial undertaking must be tackled more energetically than ever.