November 21: Socialist Medicine ERC Research Seminar
The Socialist Medicine team is delighted to announce the first event in our new research seminar series.
Please join us!
November 21. 14:00-15:30
Room 5061, Friedrichstraße 191-193
Dr. Sara Honarmand Ebrahimi (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
On Post-nationalism, Pluralism, and the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi
Aga Khan IV delivered a speech at the Asia Society in New York in September 1979 entitled, “The Physical Structure of Islam.” In this speech, he noted how in his own commitment to the “well-being of the Ismaili community” he has come “to be ever more concerned with the physical form of Islamic world of the future will take.” He then referred to his experience with this concern in designing a 700-bed teaching hospital in Karachi. This paper will discuss how Aga Khan IV’s concern with the physical structure of Islam is rooted in his grandfather’s post-nationalist and pluralist vision. But this does not mean that the hospital buildings were unequivocally sites that embodied and shaped this vision. Aga Khan IV was only the client; the hospital was designed by a team of architects, landscape architects, contractors, health consultants, and “traditional” tile makers. To recover the lived experience of the design team, it is essential to be open to the possibility that their collective experience(s) may have overridden, hidden, or invalidated Aga Khan IV’s post-nationalist and pluralistic vision.
