Islamabad

In 1959, President Ayub Khan commissioned Greek architect Constantinos Doxiadis to create something audacious: a capital city from nothing. Karachi’s colonial associations and refugee pressures made it unsuitable; Pakistan needed a city that could symbolize unity and controlled growth. Doxiadis chose a site on the Pothohar Plateau, sheltered by the Margalla Hills, and designed a master plan based on his theory of ekistics, the science of human settlements. The result was a city divided into lettered and numbered sectors, each containing its own schools, parks, and markets. Streets were designed to separate cars from pedestrians. Green spaces were woven throughout. Growth was planned to occur without losing human scale.

Construction began in 1961. By 1967, Islamabad officially became the national capital. The Secretariat was designed by Italian architect Gio Ponti, the National Assembly by American Edward Durell Stone. But it is the 1986 Faisal Mosque that defines the skyline. Funded by Saudi King Faisal and designed by Turkish architect Vedat Dalokay, the mosque won an international competition with a design that abandoned traditional domes for an eight-sided concrete shell inspired by Bedouin tents. The four 90-meter minarets, influenced by Turkish tradition, frame a prayer hall that can accommodate 10,000 worshippers inside and 100,000 in the surrounding grounds. Against the dark green of the Margallas, the white mosque has become Pakistan’s most recognizable symbol.