Lahore residents know very well that there is much more to the city than the Badshahi mosque and the Fort. Yet mainstream descriptions of the city’s architecture mainly revolve around the landmarks. In fact, Lahore’s own residents are starting to get disconnected from the lesser known buildings that have made up its identity over the course of history.

In order to re-orient the city dwellers as well as introduce any tourists who still decide to take a trip to the city, the Office of Conservation and Community Outreach (OCCO) has launched a smartphone application called ‘OCCO Lahore.’ The app combines together eighteen years of OCCO’s work as a thinktank that maps and analyses Lahore and condenses into an application, all that is meant to allow users to rediscover Lahore in a new light. You no longer need to scour bookshops for outdated and out of print travelogues and guidebooks to find hidden treasures you might never have known existed. You can also learn more about the architecture and history of buildings you pass regularly but never stopped to appreciate.

Attiq Ahmed, the founder of OCCO, is really passionate about the city and hopes that the app will engender more people to take ownership of the city and rekindle a relationship with it that their ancestors in the Walled City might have enjoyed. "Lahore’s inner city has a universal appeal. Gawalmandi elicits comparisons to Havana, the Walled City to medieval Italian cities. But somehow Lahore’s own residents are losing contact with the heritage of this charming city."

The application has a clean and user-friendly interface. It organises landmarks according to different categories. A map of Lahore can be used to find buildings near your location. You can also find buildings according to historic categories such as pre-Mughal, Mughal, Sikh, Colonial and post-colonial. For each landmark the app provides images and information about its architecture and development.  The app also allows you take your own pictures of Lahore’s landmarks and share them on social media. The developers want users to interact and help the OCCO team to keep adding details to enrich users’ experience.

OCCO will officially launch the app at an exhibition to be held at the National College of Arts on the 29th of November. However, the app has already been released for download on Apple and Android devices.

The loss of interest among Lahoris and unsympathetic land development by the authorities has allowed many historic sites to be destroyed. Several others need upliftment to restore them to their old beauty. The app is a modest effort by OCCO to give back to the city what it deserves.