Madhi Ur Rehman MA Architecture

[Re]Calibrating Identity

Cities are not static objects but living entities, produced and transformed through ripple effects that traverse time. This thesis reads the city of Lahore through Henri Lefebvre’s conceived, perceived and lived space. Tracing how its growth has shifted from lived, ritual-rich sociality towards conceived, infrastructure-first development, the confident statement ‘Lahore Lahore hai’ is now an uncertain question: ‘Lahore Lahore hai?’ ‘Is Lahore really Lahore?’ 

Using Carmona’s six dimensions of urban development, the thesis proposes a computational system combining cognitive data, peripheral devices, algorithms, dérive and AI to expose the discrepancy between conceived and lived space, repositioning lived experience at the origin of the city’s growth.