Old masters and new: Indus Valley School celebrates 20 years of beauty and brains

Founding members Shahid Sajjad and Shehnaz Ismail cut a cake created by the textile department.

KARACHI: For the first time since the school opened in 1990, students and faculty met on the campus of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVSAA) on Friday to celebrate 20 years of history.

“This is a time capsule, once you write something in it. It will not be opened for 10 years,” said a former student over the microphone. “Be timeless, be a part of history.”

Current architecture, design and fine arts students, alumni, and faculty members both past and present turned up, many of them nostalgic and misty eyed.

On glass tables, five feet tall, lay registration booklets for the guests. Members of the alumni body, wearing red suits with white shawls, helped out. Each guest was given a name tag and everyone was encouraged to pin them at the shoulder or chest for the meet-and-greet session.

The IVS was founded in 1989 by a group of professional architects, designers and artists, such as Noorjehan Bilgrami and Shahid Abdulla, who believed that Karachi needed such a school. Soon other big names pitched in and while they cannot be all mentioned in this space, some of them included sculptor Shahid Sajjad, Imran and Nighat Mir, Shehnaz and Inayat Ismail, Javed Ibrahim, Mian Saghir, Salima Hashmi, Naazish Atta-Ullah, Iqbal Hassan.

“It is truly wonderful to witness the great journey that IVS had made and will continue to make,” said Farah Mahbub, a veteran photography teacher. “It is absolutely incredible to see, especially if you track our progress from the past.”

One of the nuggets of IVS’s history includes the story on the relocation of the Nusserwanjee Building to the Clifton campus, something that no one has done in the subcontinent. The Victorian style warehouse in Kharadar was built at least a century ago by the first mayor of Karachi, Nusserwanjee Mehta. It was going to be demolished. But then, IVS decided to rescue it. With the help of architects Yadullah Haider and Ashiq Usmani each of the 26,000 stones were carefully numbered and removed, transferred and re-erected at the site.

The entire garden of the campus was put to use and was covered with brown tables with orange legs placed alongside round white tables with steel chairs for the concert and dinner. At the other end, on a large stage lit with dim blue bulbs were drums, guitars and a piano all plugged into speakers almost 10 feet tall.

The textile department had put together a cake shaped like the school emblem. It was cut by founding members Shahid Sajjad and Shanaz Ismail. The evening was punctuated by IVS’s own rising star, Usman Riaz. His signature percussion guitar and piano performance ended the evening on a memorable note.

For anyone who wanted to take something away with them was a section selling souvenirs such as mugs, shirts, pencils, notepads and bags. “Our goal is to promote an element of nostalgia for people who are no longer directly tied to the institution,” said Zaid Baker, a former student.

The event was an excellent chance for students to start a few projects. “We are working on a documentary of testimonials by the founders of IVS and students,” said Mohammed Ali, a former student. “We want to capture the happiness and unity that such events can create.”

New IT lab

Students scurried over to the newly refurbished Agha Hasan Abedi computer laboratory at IVS on Friday.

Their faces were full of joy, and some exhaled sighs of relief as they entered the IT room. Once their log-ins and passwords were handed out, the students, returned to work with a new intensity. “We can finally use CS5 for our design projects because they require computers,” said an IT student. “This is a great upgrade and we will no longer need to bring our laptops to school.”

Twelve weeks and 2.4 million rupees later, the renovated computer laboratory reopened on Friday at 10:30 am. A group of 40 people, including the IVSAA staff, students and representatives from the Infaq Foundation, got together for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“It is essential to improve workplaces used by students and young minds,” said Infaq Foundation vice chairman Syed Bakar. IVSAA’s Samina Rais Khan appreciated that the foundation approved the request in three months.

Tariq Noor, a member of the IT staff, said that before the laboratory was upgraded, the workflow was sluggish. “New computer software did not operate to its full potential on the slow computers,” he said while removing the plastic wrapping from one of the three printers. “Boot time is under half a minute now and we are finally where we need to be in terms of equipment.”

In the past, the maintenance budget allocated towards the computer laboratory was just under Rs600,000. Now, with 35 top-of-the-line PCs, Noor estimates that this figure will most likely escalate.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24^th,  2011.