Guzargah . گزرگاہ . Pathway of Passage . The essence of a place or path where one travels, often hinting at a journey or passage through life or time

POSSIBILITIES OF A COMMUNITY FOCUSED APPROACH

PROJECT TYPE: Community Museum
LOCATION: Along Machimiani Road,
Kharadar, Karachi
USER GROUP:
Community of Kharadar, Students, Creatives,
Citizens and Tourists

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This thesis project was an investigation of the museum typology by identifying the institution’s evolving definitions and weighing its potential to frame and enable community identity in Karachi. Recognizing the city as a complex weave of different groups, instead of a single monolithic museum, multiple small community museums are advocated. The neighborhoods of Khara- Mithadar are chosen as a starting point to test this. Its identity is a tangle of different threads (religion, language, trade, the built environment, profession, cuisine) that in the urban context takes the form of trails. The spatial logic of navigating the labyrinthine streets whilst salvaging the origins of the museum as a place to think, be inspired and learn while engaging in dialogue become the tools to explore the spatial experience and program of this project.

The section reveals the multiple levels of the museum, including the central Guzargah space which the internal ramps wrap around walking one through the split sections of the museum. The vertical promenade of the museum employs a mix of discovery learning and stimulus response as a pedagogical model.

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