Monthly Archives: October 2019

AKDC Program Head Participates in Regional Conference on Cultural Heritage Protection for Religious Communities

The Moroccan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, with the support of the U.S. Department of State and the partnership of the Rabita Mohammadia des Oulémas (Mohammadia Association of Ulema)recently organized the “First Regional Conference on Cultural Heritage Protection for Religious Communities” October 3-4 in Rabat, Morocco. AKDC Program Head Michael Toler was one of approximately 100 experts and government officials from Morocco, the US, Europe, and multiple countries in North Africa and the Sahel regions; as well as representatives of other International Organizations, NGOs and other organizations involved in the preservation of cultural heritage, who were invited to […]

AKDC Program Head to Speak at the Gulf Architecture Project Conference in the Qatar National Library

AKDC Program Head and Archnet Content Manager Michael Toler will present the on the collections and activities of the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT), Saturday, October 12, at 9 am, in Auditorium of the Qatar National Library (QNL), Doha, Qatar. Toler’s presentation, “Gulf Architecture in the Archives of the Aga Khan DocumentationCenter, MIT Libraries: Stories and Lessons,” in a Keynote of the Gulf Architecture Conference and Exhibition, organized by the QNL in collaboration with Liverpool University’s School of Architecture, Qatar University’s Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, and Ibrahim Jaidah, CEO and Chief Architect, Arab Engineering Bureau. The […]

AKDC at the 1st Annual Conference & Exhibition of Electronic Resources & Libraries – Middle East Chapter

The 1st Annual Conference & Exhibition of Electronic Resources & Libraries – Middle East Chapter (ER&L-Middle East) takes place October 9-10 at the InterContinental Hotel in Festival City, Dubai, UAE. AKDC@MIT will be represented in the vendor fair by Interim Program Head and Archnet Co-Director, Dr. Michael A. Toler. He will be demonstrating Archnet and other AKDC online presences in the ER&L – Middle East Exhibition. Stop by with your questions, comments, and suggestions about Archnet or any other AKDC services. I would be particularly interested in ideas for collaboration that might help us provide Archnet users with more comprehensive […]

See what was most popular on Archnet in September

Our most accessed resources lists were shaken up a bit in September by two things: publication of recordings of Moroccan music made in 1959 by Paul Bowles in town of Ouezzane at the base of the Moroccan Rif Mountains and, even more so, by the announcement of the six projects to receive the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in the 14th triennial cycle of the prestigious award. The 2019 Award Recipients collection was made available to Archnet users the very day the announcement was made in Kazan, Tatarstan. As has been the case for more than a year now, a […]

Rifat Chadirji Archive includes drawings of his 1966 building destroyed in January 2019

In this post Betsy Baldwin, Collections Archivist in AKDC@MIT, reports on some drawings recently discovered in the archive of pioneering Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji. A recent set of original architectural drawings discovered within the Rifat Chadirji Archive include drawings of the National Insurance Company Building that he designed for Mosul. Constructed in 1966, this building was put to a shockingly horrible use in 2017 when ISIS used it to execute people it decided had broken Islamic law, most notably young gay men who were thrown from it to their deaths. After the recapture of Mosul, restoration was considered. Unfortunately, the […]

Matt Saba speaks at conference hosted by the Sorbonne Université and Musée du Louvre

Matt Saba, Visual Resources Librarian for Islamic Architecture, AKDC@MIT, will participate in an international conference in Paris on October 3-4. The conference, hosted by the Sorbonne Université and Musée du Louvre, focuses on Islamic heritage through the lens of scholarly archives, and features a host of papers using archival collections to shed new light on questions in Islamic art and archaeology. Saba will speak on the subject of the historiography of Islamic architecture through the lens of the archives of Ernst Herzfeld, a German archaeologist whose archive is divided between a number of European and North American institutions. The conference […]