Introduction and Approach: Sharing Culture and Knowledge of the Core of Multan

Abstract

The city is the synthetic element of a culture because the evocative quality of the urban space recreates a world that, when expresses formal completeness, regards architecture as a research of perfection: research and completeness that the city, particularly the ancient one, reflects in its monuments and even more in its vast, various, and representative totality, also identifiable as monument.

The features of the Indo-Islamic city within urban history are the topic of this essay. Multan, a Pakistani historic city in the Punjab Province, has played, and may still play, a remarkable role as an example of perspectives of development in urban culture. Understanding the reasons for the ancient city's form provides the motivation for conservation and transformation choices. This gives sense and reason in view of the future city, where the ancient parts are destined to play an increasingly decisive role.

The work here presented deals with different fields of activities linked by the polytechnic culture that sees in the city as a great sea toward which flow the rivers of architectural, engineering, and industrial design research. Particularly, as can be seen better in the parts that follow, singular research activities, each directed toward its own distinct disciplinary specificity, proved to be capable of adapting the methods and procedures of knowledge and intervention to the problems and objectives set by the particular social status and economic and cultural conditions of Multan.