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Category Archives: All AKDC News

Books and Bites on Wednesday, November 20

Join us in the Department of Distinctive Collections Reading Room (14N-118) to engage with recent acquisitions and highlights from Distinctive Collections and Rotch Library, including artist books, rare books, and materials from the Aga Khan Documentation Center. Enjoy refreshments while you explore!

New for the Fall Semester

As we start the 2024-2025 academic year, we bring you nearly 5,000 records added since the end of the last academic year: 30 new sites, 21 publications, 73 authority records, and 4,842 media records. The collage to the left includes 7 of the new site records. How many can you identify? For answers, see the following links corresponding to the images, clockwise from the top left: www.archnet.org/sites/21840 www.archnet.org/sites/21841 www.archnet.org/sites/21825 www.archnet.org/sites/21816 www.archnet.org/sites/21815 www.archnet.org/sites/21835

NOTICE: Archnet will be unavailable for several hours on July 10th

Archnet.org will be unavailable starting at 9 am EDT/ 1 pm UTC on July 10 while we migrate over 140,000 media (images, documents, and videos) to an IIIF-capable server so that we can continue making Archnet media available to you via state-of-the-art technology. The process is likely to last 6-8 hours, though it is not possible to start precisely. IIIF stands for “International Image Interoperability Framework,” a standard for hosting, serving, describing, sharing, and viewing images of other visual media that has been widely adopted by libraries, archives, galleries, and museums to further facilitate the sharing of their collections. This […]

Digital Interfaces Workshops on Documenting West African Heritage Held at MIT

  The A3-Archnet Digital Interfaces Workshop week, hosted by the Aga Khan Documentation Center @ MIT, was held on 27 February – 3 March 2023 in the MIT Libraries. The Nigerian delegation was led by A3 founder Baba Oladeji and consisted of three winners of the A3-Archnet Writing Competition, Adefola Toye, Muhammed Madandola, Abdullah Ogunsetan. The Nigerian delegation received an orientation tour from Matt Saba, Interim Program Head and Michael Toler, Archnet Content Manager in the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC@MIT), on Sunday, 26th February 2023. A fourth prize winner, Enwonwu Chiagozie Mitchelle, was unable to participate in […]

Documenting Heritage Destruction from the Turkey-Syria Earthquake

العربية Türkçe Even as it continues to rise, the number of fatalities from the horrible earthquake that shook large parts of Turkey and Syria defies comprehension, and the number of those injured and left homeless is many times that number. Many children have lost their families and will need to be provided for. Heartbreaking seems too mild a word!  Addressing this urgent humanitarian need is the first priority, and we urge you to support relief efforts however you can. There is a list of international aid agencies on this page from the Aga Khan Development Network.  Humanitarian aid is and […]

Digital Documentation of African Cultural Heritage, Friday, March 3

As Black History Month draws to a close, the A3-Archnet collaboration to document African architecture is starting a week of workshops at MIT that will conclude on Friday with a public presentation on Friday, March 3, at 3 pm in The Nexus of Hayden Library.  It will also be streamed live on Zoom. The in-person event is free and open to the public. Registration is required for the webinar. The participants in the workshops-Muhammed Madandola, recipient of a degree in architecture from the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology in Nigeria and a Master’s in Islamic art, architecture, and urbanism from […]

New Issue of OA Journal DISEGNARECON

Beniamino Polimeni, Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Hertfordshire and Michael A. Toler, ARCHNET Content Manager in the Aga Khan Documentation Center, have edited a new issue of DISEGNARECON, an Open Access Journal on Architecture and Cultural Heritage published by the University of L’Aquila in Italy. The issue, Vol. 15, No. 28, also available on Archnet, includes 7 articles on the theme of “Cities and Migration: Visual approaches to the challenges of increasingly diverse cities,” including two contributions by Polimeni and Toler, the introductory editorial and “On the Move: Michel Écochard, Migration, and Transdisciplinary Exchange in Urban Design.” […]

Fall Semester Employment Opportunity

The Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT), is seeking an employee to assist with processing content for Archnet, an open access, scholarly resource focused on architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation issues, with a particular focus on the Muslim world. Archnet provides ready access to unique visual and textual material to facilitate teaching, scholarship, and professional work of high quality. Duties: The successful applicant will assist in various projects under the supervision of Archnet Content Manager Michael Toler, including: Work with the Archnet Content Manager and Visual Resources Librarian Matt Saba to prepare uploads of […]

20 projects in 16 countries, from Indonesia to Cape Verde, Shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture

Geneva, Switzerland, 2 June 2022 – The Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) today announced 20 shortlisted projects for the 2022 Award cycle. The projects will compete for a share of the US$ 1 million prize, one of the largest in architecture. The 20 shortlisted projects were selected by an independent Master Jury from a pool of 463 projects nominated for the 15th 3-year cycle (2020-2022) of the prestigious award. Independent experts, including architects, conservation specialists, planners and structural engineers, have conducted rigorous on-site reviews for each project . The Master Jury meets again this summer to examine the on-site […]

AKDC Program Head to edit volume on the topic of restitution of cultural artifacts

AKDC Program Head Dr. Nur Sobers-Khan is one of the curators of §RETURN, HEAL, REDISTRIBUTE, an upcoming issue of ROOTS§ROUTES a multilingual, independent quarterly magazine of visual culture published in Italy. The focus of the issue curated by Dr. Sobers-Khan, Domenico Sergi, Anna Chiara Cimoli and Giulia Grechi is Restitution, an important and timely issue in contemporary museum practice, the debate of which often serves to expose “deeply rooted colonial epistemologies.” In Europe and the US, “one of the most frequent objections to restitution is the weak scientific infrastructure of the communities where objects would be returned,” a premise that […]