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  • Robert: Thank you. It's great to be here and before I get started with my colleague Bill,

  • I would like to really thank Kirk and his staff at NCPTT for hosting this forum and

  • I especially want to thank our current NCPE executive team for really listening to the

  • membership and holding this type of educational forum because that's what we are, we're educators.

  • In my 10 years being part of NCPE, this has been a long haul waiting for this to occur

  • so we're very, very happy that this current group has pulled this together.

  • What we're going to talk about today is a relatively new experience for the Boston Architectural

  • College and myself. Not so much so for my colleague Bill which you'll learn about in

  • a little bit. Before I get too far into our presentation, those of you that have worked

  • with or for or received funding from our state department understand this slide. We are required

  • to disclose their participation in this project. Of course, the American flag must always be

  • represented at the same if not greater than any other logo in any presentation or collateral

  • material et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Here's to my colleagues at the state department,

  • thank you very much. I imagine that most of you are like me going back about just about

  • a year ago. What I knew about Pakistan was what I saw in CNN, read in the New York Times,

  • saw on PBS or the network news, I now know a lot more. I thought I would start the presentation

  • by sharing with you what Anatol Lieven recently wrote about Pakistan. Pakistan is divided,

  • disorganized, economically backward, corrupt, violent, unjust, often savagely oppressive

  • towards the poor and women and home to extremely dangerous forms of extremism and terrorism.

  • Yet it moves and in many ways surprisingly tough and resilient as a state and society.

  • It is also quite ... Not quite as unequal as it looks from the outside. Now, this sounds

  • like the perfect place to develop a historic preservation program, don't you agree? However,

  • Anatol is not correct when it comes to access to education and particularly historic preservation

  • education. We believe based on current research that we are the only initiative in the country

  • at the current time to try and develop a historic preservation program.

  • How did this get started? Last fall, we received an award from the United States State Department

  • to help a mirror institution in Pakistan develop a historic preservation curriculum. This of

  • course was launched in Boston. This is not Pakistan. Let me tell you a little bit about

  • the partners. Serendipitously, the Boston Architectural College and NCA which is the

  • National College of Arts Rawalpindi have strikingly similar histories. The schools are located

  • in urban settings. Both were founded in the last quarter of the

  • 19th Century to provide skills training as oppose to academic educations. The BAC was

  • formed in 1889 as the Boston Architectural club who's gentlemen members provided enhance

  • skills training to draftsmen employed in their offices. The Mayo School of Art was established

  • by the British in 1875 to perpetuate indigenous crafts and trades in the Punjab region in

  • Pakistan, not Pakistan then, plus support the needs of the Lahore Museum.

  • John Lockwood Kipling famous illustrator and father of Rudyard Kipling was appointed the

  • curator of the museum and principal of the school. Over the decades, both schools evolved

  • into accredited degree granting institutions. Mayo School of Art was restructured in 1958

  • by the government of Pakistan as the National College of Arts. Ironically, the first principal

  • charged with developing the new curricular was American. One of the original of the monuments

  • men of World War II fame. Mark Ritter Sponenburgh transformed the former training school into

  • a contemporary college of design, architecture, and fine art.

  • In 2005, National College of Arts opened the Rawalpindi campus to provide more geographic

  • access to Pakistan is seeking formal design educations. Boston Architectural Club became

  • the Boston Architectural Center in 1944 to provide architecture education predominantly

  • in the evening for those students needing to work during the day. By 2006, Boston Architectural

  • College had evolved into four schools of design and related disciplines offering baccalaureate

  • and graduate degrees in architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture, and design

  • studies. BAC and NCA also shares several common pedagogical

  • philosophies and approaches to learning. First, all baccalaureate students are required to

  • take the same foundation year of study regardless of their chosen program of study. Second,

  • experiential learning and community engagement involvement are woven throughout the respective

  • curriculum. Third, the majority of the faculty maintains academic and practicing professional

  • credentials. These common attributes result in graduates well prepared for careers and

  • design related fields in our respective countries. If you look at the urban context today of

  • these schools and how they've evolved, here's the image of NCA Rawalpindi's modernist building

  • set in an urban context of Rawalpindi, the ancient city which had the modern city created

  • from scratch in the 1960's which is now the national capital of Islamabad. The BAC of

  • course has had its additional architecture added to the portfolio in this brutalist building

  • in a very metropolitan setting of the current day Boston. Here are just some images of how

  • similar the schools are at the outset studio work.

  • I dare you to tell me whether these are NCA or BAC students or both. I think students

  • are students no matter where you are. Now we have an excellent opportunity to work with

  • our mirror institution. However, there are some caveats to this work. We have two other

  • interested parties which have a lot to do with how we conduct ourselves and what deliverables

  • we produce. In the Pakistani side, we have the Higher Education Commission. You can see

  • us sitting around the table in a high level meeting with them.

  • Our first trip last fall learning about how much they're looking forward to developing

  • STEM curricula and putting most of the resources of Pakistan's government in education toward

  • STEM not much to do with historic preservation. We have of course our own department of state

  • and here's an image from the US Embassy in Islamabad Public Affairs Section and what's

  • wrong with this picture? Here we have Bill and myself and trying to be appropriate dressing

  • in native garb and all of the Islamabad Embassy personnel are dressed in western garb so what

  • to do? Here are the major objectives of this relationship.

  • Number one is curriculum development. Number two is distance learning the Pakistanis need

  • to reach more students in their country which don't have access now and they're very backward

  • when it comes to any type of distance learning pedagogy or curriculum. Collaborative research,

  • faculty development, this is critical. The faculty at NCA again are practicing professionals

  • and not educators necessarily. Faculty and student exchange, we're expecting

  • the first cohort of Pakistani students and faculty to arrive in Boston this fall and

  • we'll be taking our first cohort of BAC students to Pakistan in the spring semester and this

  • will continue for semesters to come. Cultural exchange, in objective 7 this is the one that

  • I'm most interested in because the state department has been very generous with their seed funding

  • for this opportunity but they're expecting at this partnership continues forever basically.

  • Here are some of the strategies that we have identified that will help the partnership

  • continue into the future. Now, I'm going to turn the mic over to my

  • colleague Bill Remsen. He's going to talk about one of the really interesting projects

  • that we've already got under way with our colleagues.

  • Bill: I'm going to talk a little bit about the field school which is the first bullet

  • point on the previous image. This is not your typical conservation project. This is a, this

  • is a tool. This is a mechanism to learn about conservation and the associated design issues.

  • The Sirdar Sujan Singh's Palace was built in Rawalpindi in the late 19th Century for

  • a very wealthy and influential Sikh merchant family. 27 rooms remain of what was much,

  • a much larger in the estate. Currently, in this image the right hand side has survived

  • but the entire left hand side of the image has been encroached upon by the local squatter

  • housing. The palace was built of fired brick primarily

  • with additional parts in stone, wood, and iron. It was very richly furnished and they

  • were fine decorated finishes including painted plasters, stained glass, and painted in gilded

  • carved wood. When India was partitioned in 1947, the palace was abandoned as the Sikh

  • has fled to India. The government of Pakistan took over administration of the palace and

  • allowed Muslim refugees coming into India to live there. At one point there are more

  • than 50 individual families living in the palace. You can imagine what that did to it.

  • The palace was eventually emptied when it was deeded over Fatima Jinnah Women University

  • who still owns it and in 2013, a memorandum of understanding was signed allowing our partnership

  • to establish a field school there. Man of the former refugee families still work as

  • craftsman and living in the surrounding neighborhood. These are a couple of images of posters and

  • brochures that were created during the initial part of our work where we did a structural

  • and health and safety assessment. We wanted to reach out to the community to

  • make sure that we were managing expectations and fears and to make sure they understood

  • what we we're trying to do. These were printed up in English and in Urdu handed out at the

  • site and also put on the internet. This is one of our BAC colleagues Sharon Matthews

  • being surrounded by college girls who just would not stop asking her questions. They

  • were much too shy to talk to Bob or me but boy did they talk to her. It's just wonderful.

  • Anyway, Rawalpindi talk about challenges, talk about historic preservation challenges.

  • Now, we've all seen, we've all complained about the classic kinds of problems we might

  • have here in America but in Rawalpindi, you've got 2 million plus people no sewers, no storm

  • sewers. You have tremendous electrical problems with outages everyday 4 or 5 hours. Infrastructure,

  • no. Trash pickup, no. You name it, it's a problem. Walking in towards the Haveli from

  • the main street, the alleys are extremely narrow. You can't bring any big equipment.

  • No emergency or fire vehicles. On the right is the image of the front of

  • Haveli. It's still quite a charming building. Inside, we've got a lot of formally grand

  • rooms. They're really quite beautiful but they're, they've suffered obviously. Now,

  • the field school, I just want to say about a few things about the field school. As I

  • said it's a tool for teaching and learning about conservation and adaptive reuse and

  • sustainable design in an urban environment. It's to be a proof of concept for a wide variety

  • of interventions and activities. It's also an opportunity to preserve and utilize

  • and present traditional crafts which are still available before they disappear. This is the

  • courtyard of the Haveli. The challenges are quite daunting but many of them can be resolved.

  • I think also we have to be realistic. Some challenges cannot be solved. Encroachment,

  • I've already mentioned et cetera, et cetera but we can make a real difference. Here's

  • a view of the roof that the previous occupants sold off a lot of the metal roofing and drain

  • pipes which you can imagine what that does for the conservation.

  • The brick details are exquisite. Just waiting to be cleaned and documented and conserved.

  • The interiors were once extremely rich and this is a door on the left going out on to

  • the porch which one had stained glass which was painted white for privacy and the ceilings

  • were, were very often this type of beautiful wood work that was polychromed at one point.

  • There's painted plaster work and a stone fire place just giving examples of the types of

  • details that remain just waiting, waiting to be exposed and conserved.

  • There's cast iron much of which is in pretty good shape actually. In fact, the British

  • firm that provided this in the 19th century still exist so we have some great opportunities

  • for, to resolve the missing pieces. This is an interesting room that is in a bridge that

  • crosses over the street. It must have been sort of their front parlor. It had the highest

  • level of decoration and on the right is just a detail of the ceiling which was must have

  • been actually spectacular when it was in good shape, polychromed and gold leaf.

  • Anyway, the basic ideas that the field school will allow the students to examine, investigate,

  • document, and get their hands on the full range of conservation problems. Basically,

  • every single type of typical problem that the students would face in this part of the

  • world is available here. With the assistance of visiting experts and local craftsman and

  • local staff, we will be able to give the students the field school, the hands on field school

  • experience where they will literally be able to go from room to room doing various things.

  • Gradually, piece by piece the building will be revived. Our goal isn't to finish it. Our

  • goal is to make it a living breathing active site with lots and lots of activity, lots

  • and lots of engagement with the local community. We're not looking for an end, we're looking

  • for a process and so we think of this as a great opportunity for both the National College

  • of Arts and the BAC and their students. The future of Pakistan and historic preservation

  • there. Pakistan and its rich cultural heritage face huge challenges.

  • The Boston Architectural College, National College of Arts partnership will help meet

  • these challenges by improving education and heritage preservation and management in Pakistan.

  • By exchanging Pakistani and US students and faculty and by combining architectural and

  • sustainable design with preservation on practical real world problems, the design and preservation

  • communities in both countries will benefit. With the majority of the population under

  • 24 years of age, ultimately it will be the Pakistanis themselves who will determine the

  • future of their country. They do seem eager to do a good job and we want to do what we

  • can to help them. Thank you.

  • 7 15 16 2014 NCPE Ogle 1 PGM Page 5 of 6

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Robert: Thank you. It's great to be here and before I get started with my colleague Bill,

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