Learning from Lahore: Architecture and History in Urban Pakistan
About this Event
In Pakistan, a country shaped by multiple partitions, the meaning of ‘the past’ has been subject to considerable debate. In this lecture, Dr Chris Moffat, Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary University of London, reflects on how architects in the major urban centre of Lahore have negotiated Pakistan's ‘unsettled historicity’ in their design and building work. It explores the ways in which architecture - as both object and practice - has provided a terrain for confronting the tensions animating culture and politics in this postcolonial polity.
Chris will reflect on key themes from his new book, Lahore After Modernism, introducing a generation of Pakistani architects who began practising in the 1960s and whose early careers were shaped by military coups and popular rebellions at home, ‘Third Worldist’ and ‘Pan-Islamic’ constellations regionally, and a crisis of confidence in the promises of architectural modernism globally.
Forging a new conversation between histories of architecture and the history of ideas in South Asia, Chris Moffat locates Lahore at the centre of debates around contemporary urbanization, postcolonial aesthetics and the ethics of dwelling in the modern world.
Speaker Bio
Chris Moffat is Senior Lecturer in History at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of (CUP, 2019), editor of (Folio, 2023) and co-editor of (UCL Press, 2025). His latest book was published by Stanford University Press in June 2026.
The Philip Ogden Paris Lecture
This event is part of the Philip Ogden Paris Lecture series, an annual occasion marking the start of the academic year at the Institute in Paris. It features a major contribution to Franco-British academic exchange and offers colleagues, students, and friends of the Institute and Queen Mary University of London the opportunity to engage with new research that crosses disciplinary and national boundaries.
Where is it happening?
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