Thesis topic: Wearing the walled city.

Creative Inspiration

The topic is about bringing awareness among people about walled city Lahore and its rich

history. People assume that walled city is all about Badshahi mosque and Food Street near to it.

But walled city has much more to offer than these two iconic trademarks. Here the problem is

that people don’t really know what other buildings are present in walled city and the interesting

history behind them. It’s because the encroached bazaars and flooded streets have seized the

charm of that place. But recently government of Pakistan with the help of UNESCO has

launched various restorations programs which have been executed well. Thankfully streets are

less encroached, royal passage or shahi guzargah has returned to its original form. One may see

the traces of rich history of Lahore and the artistic tastes of Mughals in the form of architecture

there.

But still very little number of people knows that walled city has around 8 to 10 historical

mosques other than Badshahi mosques. Although these mosques have been restored and are treat

for sour eyes. But sadly they have not managed to grab attention of people due to unawareness

among them. Even for the research purpose it was hard to locate those mosques for

documentation as the routes and passages leading to those mosques were not clear.

The difficulty in finding the routes which leads to such beautiful mosques helped me to

conceived this idea of working on routes and passages. This turn out to be an inspiration for the

whole thesis project to work on textile maps. The kind of maps which would not only be

functional in leading to the mosques, but can also be used as souvenirs. The end product that is

textile map has tourists as its target audience. The map would have historic information of those
streets and bazar and the iconic beautiful havelis and balconies one may find in abundance in

walled street.–

Conceptual Framework

Next step involved researching on various artists and designers who worked on textile

maps. This helped me in looking up for various techniques and ways to make my maps more

functional and aesthetically pleasing. There were two famous artists who have worked on textile

maps, first one being Alighero Boetti and second on Eric Fischer.

Alighero Boetti was an Italian artist. Back in 1990 he commissioned Afghan women to

help him make the map of the world. The main technique he used was embroidery, patchwork

and various embroidery stitches.

Second artist is Eric Fischer. He is a data artist and a software developer. He used software to

design accurate open street maps. He held exhibition in Museum of modern art where he

displayed his maps. Above all both artists have helped in forming the framework and procedure

of how to design theses maps of the selected area.