Ideal Spaces Working Group

Hassan Taimoor K. Mumtaz is senior architect at Kamil Khan Mumtaz Architects, Pakistan. He holds an MA in South Asian Design & Architecture from De Montfort University, Leicester, UK (1999) and a Bachelor of Architecture from National College of Arts, Lahore (1994). His area of research is architectural design methods used in Mughal architecture. 

He is also the founding director of Hast-o-Neest – Institute of Traditional Studies & Arts in Lahore. Hast-o-Neest promotes the research and study of traditional art and culture. It aims to provide an introduction to and a greater understanding of traditional thought, including Sufi doctrine and method, traditional philosophy, metaphysics and cosmology, and the arts such as calligraphy, miniature painting, classical music and Islamic architecture.

Having the chance to speak with the representative of a non-Western approach to architecture and cultural heritage, the cultural responsibility of architecture has been addressed. Architecture must be culturally, historically, and socially relevant. It is about the effects space has on people. Here, also the aspect of materiality is of importance: are steel, glass, and beton used (as in Western-styled architectures), or traditional materials which are natural, and local. Architecture is a mirror of civilization, more than the individual. Good architecture lets the individual human participate in something larger than itself. Culture and civilization are no abstract notions, but meaning. Traditional architecture provides a framework for judging and calibrating the changes going on today in societies. When you just follow the modern (Western) promise of a materialist paradise, you lose your humanity.      

Architecture needs a vision, and as a result, it must have a message. The grammar of architecture is important, not its single forms. There are common elements of such a grammar, through all cultures and times. Not only in Islamic architecture, the grammar is used first of all to organize space. Grammar provides harmony, symmetry, and meaning. It is like a cosmogram. In Islamic architecture, the cosmos is a reflection of paradise. The grammar has not just to be copied, for a classicism for the sake of classicism. Nor should it be the grammar of a machine, as in large parts of modern architecture.   

Haydn Price is an award-winning broadcast journalist, film maker, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts whose investigative work explores how physical, legal, and economic forces change communities.Haydn examines what happens when citizens lose control over their environments and spatial identity. For four decades, he has covered stories that chart social and cultural evolution. Starting his career at BBC Radio 4 and The Guardian, his television programs have been broadcast in thirty countries and ten languages across networks like Sky, Discovery, and the BBC.

In our podcast, Haydn starts with the evolution of information dispersal, reception, and the  socioeconomic changes aligned to it in daily life, from the days before the internet until today. These changes affected creativity in all its domains,and  its democratization in terms of accessibility. Arts and culture have been individualized, making everything more accessible, easier to produce, and cheaper. This led to an individualistic culture, with new forms of collective consciousness. In this respect, questions about democracy, the role of the state, the crumbling sense of community, and a changed fabric of society have been addressed, accompanied by a new kind of mob having TikTok. Do we really have democracy today, or just administered voting systems for bureaucratic elites? A related question is about the impact of the broad use of algorithms, in social media and elsewhere, on the loss of work and the human capability to reflect and to think. The members of a future society are consumers, and democracy becomes a secondary issue. Instead of consumption, it should be asked what makes life important. Now, we have boxes of plastic in different shapes. But as human beings, we have a choice to build a better place. We can do this - if we want to.  

Chantal Keyvork, Master in Architektur, ist Gründerin des Architekturforum.Münster und Initiatorin von Great Good Place, einer Plattform für urbane Interventionen, Dritte Räume und Community Building. Sie beschäftigt sich mit der Schnittstelle von Architektur, Stadt und Gesellschaft. Im Mittelpunkt ihrer Arbeit steht die Frage, wie Räume für Menschen entstehen können und wie in diesem Zusammenhang Umnutzungen bereits vorhandener Räume, etwa Straßen, vollzogen werden können. Dafür entwickelt sie Projekte und Interventionen, die gewohnte Nutzungen hinterfragen. 

Letztlich geht es Chantal darum, daß der Stadtraum eigentlich den Menschen gehört. Das betrifft auch die Wiederbelebung eines kulturellen Erbes, das der Gemeinschaft. So etwa durch Sperrung von Straßen und ihre “Umnutzung” von einem Raum mit Häusern und Parkplätzen in einen Gemeinschaftsraum. Dies geschieht durch Aktivitäten der Anwohner, die in Gemeinschaft durchgeführt werden. Im Zusammenhang mit der Frage nach Gemeinschaft wurden auch die Tendenzen eines Rückzuges in Social Media sowie die Gegen-Tendenz einer Wiederentdeckung des Analogen besprochen.    

Providing Opportunities for the Younger Generation

Norman Abdul Halim

Dato Norman Abdul Halim is a multi-award-winning producer and entrepreneur with over three decades of leadership in the creative industry, championing education, skills development and opportunities for future generations through Yayasan KRU (KRU Foundation). Yayasan KRU (KRU Foundation) empowers Malaysian future generations through education, creativity and skills development, celebrating cultural diversity, with AKAR as its flagship grassroots initiative nurturing creative, environmentally conscious and aspirational children.

Irit Katz is Professor of Architecture and Politics at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Christ's College, and a Leverhulme Research Fellow (2025-26). Her academic work focuses on built environments shaped in extreme conditions, including spaces of displacement, conflict, and environmental changes, in historic and contemporary contexts. Her research has won numerous recognitions including the Mellon/SAH Author Award, the RIBA President’s Award for Research, and the John Urry Mobilities Prize. 

The crisis of culture is a crisis of imagination. In our podcast with Irit Katz, we addressed this very problem, looking at the context of crises going on today; and the need for new ways of imagining a liveable future. A liveable future is about the bonum commune, the common good, it emphasizes the role of the community; instead of maximizing the benefits of single individuals, as is the case in today’s global capitalist world view. 

According to Irit, imagination is not confined to art or mere aesthetics in its common understanding, it is a necessity of life. In regards to shaping a better future, we have to focus on collective forms of imagining, says Irit, instead of still being stuck in traditional forms of imaginaries. In this context, she addressed “classical” utopias, being detached from concrete situations and local needs, and their practical impact in shaping cities and communities until today. Based on her practical work, Irit advocates for a “situated approach” as she calls it, and for the need to train imagination. In this context, there is a difference between imagination - thinking the new - and imaginaries as ideas about a future that are stuck in the past; such as the idea of the nation state, existing capitalism with its image of the human, or the inability to see contexts. New forms and ways of a collective consciousness had been discussed with Irit, as well as a new understanding of order as a flexible, viable structure, not a rigid frame not allowing for change. Such a new concept of order is mandatory for community-based imagination and hence, for a liveable future on our planet.    

Die heutige Wohnraumsituation ist von zentraler Bedeutung für Raum und Gemeinschaft, dem Leitthema unserer Stiftung. In unserem Podcast mit dem Baden-Badener Betriebswirt Karl-Werner Farkhou, geschäftsführendem Gesellschafter von zwei Firmen zur Hausverwaltung, wurden neben Fragen der Wohnraumsituation auch Aspekte zur Lösung dieser Problematik behandelt. Vor dem Hintergrund des Gemeinwohls standen Faktoren zur Debatte, die in ihrem Zusammenwirken die bestehende Wohnraumproblematik ausmachen und verschärfen. In diesen Zusammenhängen wurden machbare Lösungen besprochen, um besagte Problematik zu entschärfen.

In this podcast with Miriam Samir Rincón, it is about the preservation of the cultural heritage of the Chinampas system in Mexico City. The Chinampas belong to UNESCO Cultural Heritage and are a unique blend of ecological and cultural sustainability from Aztec times onwards. Now, this unique life space is endangered by urban sprawl, corrupted policies, pollution, and tourism. 

Miriam, holding a prize-awarded degree in architecture from University of Notre Dame, is an architect, urban designer, and heritage advocate whose work explores the intersection of culture, ecology, and the built environment. Her research focuses on the restoration of living cultural landscapes, particularly the chinampa system of Xochimilco, examining how traditional knowledge and ecological systems can inform the future of cities.

Her work has earned international recognition, including the Urban Guild Award, and the Hereditas Urbium Prize. Her work has been featured in The Art of the New Urbanism, published by the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). She served as Director of Projects at INTBAU Mexico, where she led heritage-led design and educational initiatives. Miriam is currently an Urban Designer at Moule & Polyzoides, internationally recognized pioneers and advocates of traditional architecture, urbanism, and place-based community design. 

As a participating citizen, Natasha reflects on how the movement began, where it stands today, and what it reveals about the aspirations and frustrations of India’s youth. This conversation starts with the hope to open up space for more voices and perspectives in the future podcasts on youth-led political action, dissent, and the ongoing struggle to reclaim a democratic India.

Natasha Sharma is an artist, designer, and researcher from India working at the intersection of urban development and social justice. She was previously featured on our podcast, Art and Community.. She is co-founder and curator of the Govandi Arts Festival and leads Public Art and Design programmes at the Community Design Agency. She is currently a recipient of the Dalai Lama Fellowship and serves on the advisory boards of the Global Cultural District Network and the Mumbai Arts and Health Festival.

Anna de Jong is a professor in the School of Social and Environmental Sustainability, University of Glasgow. Anna’s research focuses on tourism governance in regional areas, guided by wider concerns of resident inequalities, accessibilities, capacities and participation. 

Ideal Spaces spoke with Anna about the impacts of tourism on cities in rural areas in Scotland and Gotland/Sweden, and in touristic hotspots like Tenerife. Our talk focused on major devastating effects of tourism accompanying a neoliberal economic agenda, as well as on the gentrification effects caused by it. Tourism is accompanied by a loss of the sense of place by the original inhabitants, environmental degradation, and a loss of local services for the local community. Next to these aspects, we talked about ways of government inclusion, and organizations run by local communities to balance the negative aspects of tourism.   

We had an interview with Mustafa Sherif, urban planner and architect, about the situation of communities in recent urban contexts. According to Mustafa’s professional experience, next to the use of architecture as the “hardware” of community building, it needs the “software” of social organization, the “orgware” for bringing people together to make a change. According to Mustafa, this makes the difference between a true community and a mere audience. The prevailing mode today is to have only an audience - people fed with information. But this is not enough to create communities. In this respect, we also addressed critical success factors for building communities.