In a video shared on Facebook by the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, the co-founders of the art school tell the story behind IVS’s glorious campus. Surrounded by modern buildings in the metropolis, IVS’s campus stands out because of the cultural significance it holds and the beauty of its campus.
The video features co-founders of the IVS school Syed Akeel Bilgrami and Shahid Abdulla narrating the tale behind shifting the Nussarwanjee building and turning it into an art school campus while maintaining the glory and beauty of the structure.
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Shahid Abdulla says an “art school can’t be designed”, so instead he started looking at warehouses and buildings in an effort to find a campus that would be fit for an art school.
In his quest, he ended up in the Kharadar area of Karachi, where he came across the beautiful building which would later become the IVS campus.
But the journey was not easy. They had found the perfect building and Abulla suggested in jest to “take the school to Clifton”
Bilgrami asked him “Are you mad?” And Abdulla answered, “Yes, but aren’t we all mad?”
Thus started the project which saw the building shift brick-by-brick and set up the campus in Clifton. The building was photographed and drawn from all angles. The stones were given numbers, and brick-by-brick, almost 27,000 stones were shifted to Clifton.
“There is a difference between demolishing a building and dismantling it”, says Bilgrami.
“It is a very engaging building. The juxtaposition of the old and new is an interesting dynamic that people love,” says Dr. Jawaid Haider the Dean of Academics at IVS.
“This building has become a powerful precedent – a paradigm for saving buildings that cannot be saved in their original context,” Haider adds further.
