Islamabad
— — a capital the country sat down and drew.
Not only on a wall.
“A planned capital, laid out in the 1960s on a grid of lettered sectors that climbs toward the Margalla Hills. The Faisal Mosque holds the northern edge, its tented roof reading like a folded sheet at dusk. The pine-covered slopes go blue after the monsoon. Quieter than Lahore, younger than Karachi, and walked at its own pace.
Islamabad, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Islamabad became Pakistan's capital in 1967, replacing Karachi after a master plan by Greek architect Constantinos Doxiadis organized the city into lettered sectors stepping north toward the 12,605-hectare Margalla Hills National Park. The Capital Development Authority oversees the grid; ministries cluster in the Red Zone, residential life in F and E sectors. The city sits at roughly 540 metres on the Pothohar Plateau, just south of the Himalayan foothills and a half-hour drive from the older garrison city of Rawalpindi.
Faisal Mosque, finished in 1986 and named for King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, was designed by Turkish architect Vedat Dalokay as an eight-faceted concrete tent rather than a domed hall. Four 79-metre minarets mark the corners, and the main prayer area holds about 100,000 worshippers, with the surrounding courtyard and porticos lifting capacity past 200,000. For more than two decades it was the largest mosque in the world by capacity, and it remains the largest in South Asia. It anchors the city's northern axis at the base of the Margallas.
The climate is humid subtropical, but the elevation and the wall of the Margallas behind the city pull the air thinner than the plains. Monsoon rain arrives in July and August, and the hills go a saturated green that holds into October. Winter mornings can drop near freezing, with fog settling into the lower sectors before the sun clears the ridge. From Daman-e-Koh, the viewpoint above sector E-7, the grid below reads as bands of trees with white roofs threaded between them.