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Aga Khan Documentation Center
Aga Khan Documentation Center

Category Archives: All AKDC News

Pedagogy Project Expanded with Teaching Collections

Archnet’s Pedagogy Project  now includes items from scholars’ archives donated to AKDC@MIT since its opening in 2011. Recognizing the significance of this collection to those teaching and learning about the material and visual culture of Muslim societies, they are being added to a new Teaching Collections section of the project. Each scholar’s collection is unique and may contain slides, prints, field notes, and other materials as outlined in the finding aids for each archive. The materials housed in this collection are free to use for teaching and research purposes. Further, they provide a unique opportunity for students and scholars to examine […]

Pioneering Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji donates archive to AKDC

The  Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT is pleased to announce that is now the home of the Rifat Chadirji archive. One of the most influential Iraqi architects of the 20th century, Chadirji is also an accomplished photographer, author, teacher, and critic. Chadirji was born in Baghdad in 1926, was educated in the UK, and returned to Iraq upon graduating as an active participant in the modernization of the country, working with notable architects and designers from Europe, the United States, and Iraq including, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, and Mohamed Makiya. Chadirji has dedicated his […]

Call for Papers, Chronicles and Curation: Documenting Cultural Transitions in the Wider Middle East

The Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT is seeking presenters for a session at the BRISMES Annual Conference, 5-7 July 2017, at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Chronicles and Curation:  Documenting cultural transitions in the wider Middle East Periods of transition and upheaval pose a particular challenge to those involved in cultural documentation and curation. During such times, the categories, terms, and epistemologies—the very systems we use to classify cultural knowledge—are in flux. Instability and turmoil can obfuscate or obliterate traces of another culture or society. Our panel will focus on these concerns in praxes of chronicling and curating cultural […]

2016 on Archnet: Highlights

Happy New Year! We wish to take this opportunity to thank our contributors and supporters for making 2016 such a good year for Archnet. Development continues to make the site more responsive and user-friendly. As a result, Archnet user statistics have increased by more than 20% over the same period last year, running up more than 2,700,000 page views. Earlier this month, the Global Grid named Archnet one of 2016’s Top 20 Architecture Sites of 2016. More than 8,000 new sites, publications, videos, images and other records have been published in 2016, including: Descriptions, video, images, reports, and presentation boards for […]

AKDC Program Head interviewed by architecture student group at the University of Tehran: Lessons on building a documentation center

Sharon C. Smith, Ph.D., was recently interviewed by the Iran Architecture Studies Student Community of the University of Tehran, Iran, on the topic of establishing a documentation center. As the founding head of the current Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, Smith was asked to address some fundamental issues and provide insight for the students as they seek to set up a digital archive of Iranian architecture at the University of Tehran. The students stated that they found the interview informational, stating that “your words about the necessity of collaboration changed our approach to making our data center.” (Email correspondence, […]

Archnet Named One of Top 20 Architecture Sites for 2016

The Global Grid, a service focused on delivering daily news on “localized and unique architecture, engineering, landscape architecture, urban planning,” has named Archnet one of the Top 20 Architecture Websites for 2016. Ranked 17, other honored sites include the Architectural Record magazine, the American Institute of Architects, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the online architecture forum Skyscrapercity. Archnet–developed by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT–is an open-access, scholarly resource focused on architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation issues, with a particular focus on Muslim societies. Archnet presents visual […]

Dr. Marilyn Jenkins-Madina donates collection to the Aga Khan Documentation Center

  Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Ph.D., Curator Emerita, Department of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, has donated her research collection to AKDC@MIT.  Her gift includes ca. 4,250 35mm slides, along with some born digital images, from important sites and collections throughout the Middle East and North Africa including, but not limited to: Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, and Iran.  Many of the sites she documented have now been lost to time, natural disaster, or war and can only be studied through scholars’ collections such as this. Jenkins-Madina began her long curatorial career at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in […]

Exhibition: José Luis Argüello, AKPIA Posters (2001-2016)

A retrospective of Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT posters designed by José Luis Argüello is on display now in Rotch Library at MIT. Sponsored by AKPIA MIT and AKDC@MIT, with introduction by Professor Nasser Rabbat, this exhibition illustrates José Luis Argüello’s thoughtful and extraordinary posters “that not only visually document the activities of the Aga Khan Program at MIT for the last fifteen years, but also reveal the refined sensibilities of their designer and his evolving mastery of the communicative potential of the art and architecture of the Islamic world.” The exhibition is free and open to […]

AKDC@MIT hosts Middle East Librarians Association annual meeting

The Middle East Librarians Association (MELA)  Annual Meeting will be held at MIT on 15-16 November 2016; MELA’s vendor fair will take place on 17 November at Boston Marriott Copley Place.  Sponsored by the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, the theme of this year’s meeting is Partnerships: Enhancing Opportunities. The program can be viewed here. Sharon C. Smith, program head of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, currently serving as vice president and program chair for this year’s events, will begin her four year term as MELA’s president at the end of the conference. MELA was founded in 1972 to […]