The +921HeritageTalks is an annual conference focusing on South Asian narratives, led by Pakistan Chowk Community Centre (PCCC), under the guidance of its Founder, Architect and Spatial Advocate, Marvi Mazhar.
The conference is a multidisciplinary platform, allowing researchers, academics, students and professionals from various backgrounds to jointly talk, present and collaborate over issues pertaining to Heritage in Global South.
The +921HeritageTalks 2025 is centered around “Post Colonial Narratives in South Asia”. Our first session is titled “Architecture, Modern Heritage and Urbanism: Spaces of Power and Identity in South Asia”.
From Chandigarh’s concrete landmarks to Islamabad’s orderly grid, post 1947 capitals were envisioned as monuments to sovereignty and modernity. Yet these state led projects often relied on inherited colonial planning logics – centralized, uniform and top down – leaving behind patterns of exclusion and spatial inequality that persist in today’s slum clusters and peripheral settlements.
Join our panel of architects, planners and scholars as they:
Trace how modernist ideals and foreign expertise shaped South Asia’s new urban centers.
Examine the disconnect between symbolic nation-building and lived urban realities.
Discuss the ongoing legacies of colonial frameworks in our cities’ form, identity and contested public spaces.
Furthermore, the conference opens up global narratives regarding conservation, preservation and ecology among many other issues. The webinar aims to develop feasible solutions that could be helpful for concerned authorities as a way to safeguard heritage for future generations and to help establish practices rooted in local context.