Photo of inscription. Mosque of al-Salih Tala’i‘, Islamic Cairo, Cairo, Egypt

Category Archives: All AKDC News

AKDC to offer Introduction to Islamic Calligraphy

In collaboration with calligrapher and graphic designer Sangeetha Kowsik, AKDC@MIT will offer an introductory workshop on “Arabic Calligraphy: An Artistic Journey from Kufic to Contemporary Design,” January 14, 2021 from 2 to 4 PM EST, during MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP). The workshop introduces a brief history of Arabic calligraphy, a tradition whose practice spans more than one thousand years and continues today, where it is globally recognized for its unique aesthetics of geometric proportion and sinuous curve. In the first part of this workshop, the most important of the classical Arabic scripts are introduced through famous examples of artworks, […]

IAP Presentation: Spies, Pirates, and Atlas Lions: US-Moroccan Relations through the lens of the Tangier American Legation

AKDC@MIT is organizing a presentation, “Spies, Pirates, and Atlas Lions: US-Moroccan Relations through the lens of the Tangier American Legation,” on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, 4 to 5:30 pm. The lecture is part of the Independent Activities Period (IAP) offerings of the MIT Libraries. The old American Legation in the medina (walled city) of Tangier, Morocco holds a number of distinctions. It is the first property the United States owned abroad, it is the only overseas site on the National Register of Historic Places, and it was an active diplomatic structure longer than any other diplomatic presence of the US […]

Content added to Archnet in 2020

2020 has been an unusually difficult year around the world, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As universities took courses online, Archnet.org, a joint project of the Aga Khan Documentation Center of the MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT) and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) worked with our partners step up the pace through which we made available quality resources for studying Islamic architecture and the built environment of Muslim societies more broadly. Approximately 3,350 new records have been published on Archnet so far this year. In addition to making over 2,700 new images available for download, we have also published records […]

Where did Archnet users come from in 2020?

Between January 1 and December 7, 2020, the total number of Archnet users rose by 6.4% over the same period in 2019. These users viewed a total of nearly 3 million records, 12% more than they viewed in 2019. Use of Archnet has risen steadily since 2015, the first full year for which we have reliable statistics on our current platform. To date, visitors have come to Archnet from more than 200 countries or territories, but the largest user groups are in India (21%), the United States (14%), and Turkey (6%). Social media has become a more significant source of […]

Nur Sobers-Khan appointed Program Head

We are thrilled to share the announcement that Nur Sobers-Khan has been appointed Program Head for the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT). Reporting to Emilie Hardman, Head of the Libraries Distinctive Collections (DDC), the Program Head is a critical leadership position responsible for stewarding and developing collections, services, and programs to support the information needs of the faculty, students, and researchers of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) in MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. It also provides oversight of Archnet in partnership with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and engages in other innovative collection […]

What was new and who was using Archnet in October?

58,272 users visited Archnet between October 1 and October 31, viewing a total of 286,946 pages, watching 140 videos, downloading 7,820 publications, and conducting 7,556 searches. The most-watched video was Close to Home: Al-Khimyah, written and directed by Prince Aly Muhammad Aga Khan, and revealing how a pile of rubble in Cairo became Al-Azhar Park, a 30-acre green space with lakes and fountains in the heart of the historic city, and its impact of the lives of residents in the area. The most downloaded publication continues to be Charles Correa, a survey of the architect‘s early work. You can find […]

Online Screening of 10 Days Before the Wedding, a new feature film from Yemen

For several years AKDC@MIT has sponsored a film series with the Center for Arabic Culture here in Boston. Though we have not been able to host in-person screenings since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have decided on a new way to continue this series online. In collaboration with CAC Boston and the Middle Eastern Studies Program at Wellesley College, we will be hosting our first virtual screening of the new movie 10 Days Before the Wedding (2018), the first feature film shot in Yemen since the start of the conflict in 2014. The movie is directed by independent […]

Archnet sees a significant rise in visitors during September

True to form, visitors to Archnet jumped by 24% from August to September. Though Archnet is intended as and has proven to be a resource for both practitioners and scholars of architecture, the number of visitors coming from academic domains increases significantly as the summer comes to an end, and learning management systems from universities start to refer visitors for the first time since the previous July. The number of pages per session in September 2020 rose by 4% over last year, with roughly comparable increases in the number of sessions per user, session duration, and the total number of […]

Urban October on Archnet

Situated on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, the city of Beirut, is one of the oldest in the world. Control of the area has been contested throughout its history, and these conflicts have taken their toll on the city’s built environment. But on August 4 the city around the port was rocked by a massive explosion unrelated to armed conflict. The explosion caused the death of hundreds and injuring thousands more. It also caused billions in property damage, leaving approximately 3000,000 homeless. Lebanese architect and scholar Ali Khodr is developing a survey on the Built Heritage of Lebanon for […]

New resources for teaching and learning about architecture

On March 12, just before the Aga Khan Documentation Center closed along with the rest of the campus due to the pandemic, we published “Resources for teaching and studying architecture during COVID-19 closures” on this site. Few other articles in this site have been visited as much as that one, and Archnet saw a significant increase in traffic that lasted through the rest of the academic year. We’ve also been busy since then, adding 62 sites, 151 publications, 42 videos, 1714 images, and 54 authority records to Archnet. We hope that some of those resources will prove useful to you […]