Manaal Zafar's
Class of 2023
Advisors
- - Qurratulain Poonawala
- - M. Usman Ansari
- - Rafia Dadi
You sleep in my room…
Site: Radio Pakistan Building, Karachi
An audio and visual archive experienced through a curated immersive tour of Radio Pakistan.
This thesis brings forward a problem that is kept under wraps in Karachi, forced occupation of heritage buildings at the hands of either the Rangers, police or the state. It looks at Radio Pakistan in particular, once the main attraction of M.A Jinnah road; now hidden behind the barricades and barbed wires of the Sindh Rangers, after being converted into the Rangers HQ in 2015.
I identified how complicated the timeline of Radio Pakistan is, and looked into how all its past layers of history could be highlighted with the impression of the perpetrators, to make the user realize the Palimpsest. I picked 3 influential people from 3 different genres in the history of Radio Pakistan, and re-designed it how they would want the user to see Radio Pakistan; in a curated audio and visual experiential tour through immersive experiences of music, politics and drama.
Noor Jehan takes the user through the history of music, emphasizing each space with her glamour. M.A Jinnah takes the user through the history of politics, and the necessary role that Radio Pakistan played in granting people freedom of speech. Talat Hussain, the most famous voice actor to come out of Radio Pakistan, takes the user through the history of drama and literacy. These people would show the user Radio Pakistan through the years, recalling important events that occured, with the influences of the Rangers in each space, to highlight the complex Palimpsest of an important heritage building like Radio Pakistan. At the end of the tour, the user would end up in a ‘jail’, made especially for the avatar who gave them the tour, to show the impact the Rangers had in forever changing the historical Palimpsest as well.
