Karachi is a city as much under the onslaught of globalization as any in the developing world and its emerging architecture is a reflection of this phenomenon. The newest buildings here, most of them corporate and commercial, could belong anywhere in the world – especially in the more affluent, resource-rich cities such as those of the Middle East. These buildings flaunt facades composed of large glass surfaces, steel frames, aluminum cladding panels, grey concrete, punched metal lattices and other materials that are locally presumed to be emblematic of “modernity” and technological progress in architecture. What has long been the chosen architectural language of the corporate and commercial sectors is now being adopted avidly for the industrial architecture of the city. Nowhere is this more visible than on main Korangi Road.
Home to major industrial units of Pakistan, Karachi’s Korangi area is the apotheosis of the “concrete jungle” - a grey and dusty place, saturated with the huff and puff of heavy vehicles and largely devoid of vegetation. Korangi Road, its main circulation spine, is punctuated by roundabouts named after their sponsor companies and by the latest factory buildings which display the aesthetic outlined above: large scale use of glass, aluminum, grey concrete and steel.
One prominent roundabout named Getz Roundabout is marked by the imposing construction site of Getz Pharma’s Astola Project. Like its eponymous Arabian Sea island off the coast of Baluchistan, Astola’s buildings are a striking difference in a sea of uniformity, an act of resistance to the status quo.
ASTOLA
The Astola project comprises 1,600,000 sqft of built area on a 12.5 acre (546,250 sqft) site. As planned, six distinct but interconnected buildings form an integrated complex: Cephalosporin, High Volume Oral Dosage (HVOSD) and Large Volume Parenteral (LVP) production units in addition to a building each for warehouse, utilities and basement parking functions. The roof of the 150-car parking structure is designed as a garden landscape with an outdoor amphitheater at its heart – a testament to Getz Pharma’s passion for the arts and cultural events.
While it is common for Korangi’s private industrial premises, especially pharmaceuticals, to adorn their open spaces with gardens, Astola goes beyond its boundaries to improve the city. Getz Pharma has adopted the road to the west of its plot, planted it with trees and illuminated it with street-lights. Not only does this intervention ameliorate the degradation in Astola’s immediate surroundings, it becomes also a contribution to the surrounding community and cityscape. This is an inspired initiative – one that could transform the quality of Korangi at large if adopted by more companies with factories in the area. As the plot is open from three sides, the building facades (designed by the author in collaboration with project lead architects Gul and Thariani - a venerable name locally in industrial architectural design) have been crafted with care to adorn all aspects whether these face the main road or otherwise – a strategy completely different from the front face-lifting practices adopted for so many structures in Korangi.
A CRITICAL ARCHITECTURE
The buildings at Astola are a work of what is called “critical” architecture. This is because they pretend to be neither traditional nor indiscriminately global in their architectural language. They are a result of discernment regarding what it means to be both internationally contemporary and locally situated. They have forms that lie squarely within the modernist paradigm – straight lines, bold masses, simplicity of detail, absence of ornamentation. The windows are “ribbon”, The walls are planes that slide past each other, the facades are liberated from the column structure – all well-rehearsed modernist tropes.
Yet the buildings at Astola, through their materiality, seek to belong to the context – that context which is defined primarily by Karachi’s climate and its physical and human resources. The longest, dominant façade of the project, facing westward, has a primarily solid envelope to fend off the harsh Karachi sun and its resulting heat. The walls plastered with pigments of yellow and terracotta are colored so as to blunt the stab of the stark sunlight. Glass is used only as an accent material and only where there is a need for natural light for instance in the offices and social spaces.
Plaster-work is labor-intensive rather than factory produced which imparts a craft aspect to the buildings as well as deploying locally available resources. The buildings, contemporary in language and global in mission, thus become rooted and home-grown.
The solidity of massing is also used to aesthetic advantage – the push and pull of volumes and planes creating deep shadows on the façade with the movement of the sun westward. The roof profile culminates in floating white pergolas - a nautical allusion, a nod to Karachi’s coastal location.
SUSTAINABLE IDEAS
Aspiring to a LEED Gold Certification from the USGBC (United States Green Building Council), Astola incorporates significant sustainable ideas outlined below:
1. Solar power production of 400 KW
2. Optimization of glazed surface area to reduce heat gain within the building
3. Use of locally sourced surface render materials such as textured plaster and washed terrazzo
4. Prevention of light pollution of the night skies by the use of indirect lighting oriented downwards or shaded from above
5. Integration of vegetation, especially trees, to improve the micro-climate within the Astola site as well as contribute greenery to its immediate industrial surroundings
6. The roof garden designed with an amphitheater where the Getz Pharma community comes together for social events as well as connects with nature within the concrete jungle of Korangi
7. All vegetation of indigenous species, most of them herbal and health-giving
8. Maximum reliance on hardy trees and ground cover, minimization of grassy areas in order to conserve water
9. Raised planters double as sky-lights bringing natural daylight into the parking basement
10. Use of locally sourced construction materials to reduce consumption of “embodied” energy in the transport of materials
Getz Pharma’s Astola is an island of excellence in Karachi in its aspiration to be a world-class production facility and workplace – one that can be termed a Pakistani success story. Accordingly, its architecture seeks to reflect the values of high aesthetics, sustainability, functionality and civic contribution. It seeks to be local yet global, grounded in its context yet relevant in the global environment.