News & Events
AKDC’s LayerCake mapping tool now available to the public
The Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT), is pleased to announce the public release of LayerCake, an interactive tool for mapping data points across time and space. The LayerCake project was initiated by Sharon C. Smith, Ph.D., Head of Distinctive Collections at Arizona State University, and former AKDC@MIT Program Head, who served as the PI for the project. Interim AKDC Program Head, Michael Toler, Ph.D. now serves as the project PI. Working with designer and programmer, James Yamada (MDes, Harvard GSD, 2014), the tool is currently under development at AKDC@MIT. As a 3-axes mapping tool, LayerCake enables users to...
Top Pages on Archnet in March 2019
According to Google Analytics, there were 274,014 unique page views in March 2019. Click here to see the most popular publications, videos, and search terms for the month.
Happy Birthday Michel Écochard
It he were alive today, architect and urban planner Michel Écochard would be celebrating his 114th birthday. Born March 11, 1905 in Paris, he went to work for the Colonial Antiquities Service of Syria and Lebanon almost immediately after graduating from the École des Beaux-Arts. By the time of his death on May 24, 1985 he had received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) for the restoration of the Azem Palace in Damascus, and carried out projects in Cameroon, the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Guinea, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, Syria, and Turkey. In the mid-1980s Écochard donated...
Archnet sites now available on Hoverpin
AKDC is partnering with Hoverpin to make selected Archnet content available on their AI based app. Hoverpin allows users to create personalized maps based on their interests by surfacing and aggregating location-based content from a range of topics onto a single screen. Currently the Archnet layer on Hoverpin gives you a map-based view of sites from 3 collections–Mosques of North America, Islam in Europe, and the Islamic Heritage of Bangladesh–as well as examples of significant architecture in Morocco. These sites were chosen for this pilot project, but look for more content soon. Users who allow the app to access their location will...
AKDC Collaborates on Timeline Travel Project
In fall of 2018, the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT had the opportunity to contribute to an exciting new digital humanities project titled Timeline Travel. The aim of the project is to create an alternative teaching and learning tool for architectural history that taps into the visual learning capacities of today’s students. The Timeline Travel tool features online interactive timelines and maps for various historic cities, where visitors can explore monuments and learn more about their histories through descriptions and images. The project currently features timelines for Istanbul, Ravenna, Edirne, and Gaziantep, and will be available in Turkish, English,...