Category Archives: All AKDC News

Center for Arabic Culture and AKDC to present Balloons Over Babylon

The Center for Arabic Culture and the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries, will screen Balloons Over Babylon on Saturday, January 11, 2020, 6 PM – 9 PM in Room 3-133 of the MIT campus. The film is part of the “One Voice, Endless Change” film series for Spring 2020. Balloons Over Babylon tells the story of Murtada al-Hachami, one man’s quest to fight terrorism and promote peace and love by flying hot air balloons over his war-torn country.” The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Folke Rydén, the Director; Murtada al-Hachami, the subject of the film; Dr. […]

Happy New Year from ARCHNET!

Happy New Year from all of us who work on Archnet.org. We wish all our users, donors and contributors a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2020! 2019 was an eventful year for us. Archnet moved to a new platform and a new provider in 2020 without causing significant disruptions to our users. In addition we made available records for over 6,500 images, 170 new sites, 90 publications, and 45 authorities. We brought you documentation of the shortlisted and recipient projects in the 14th-cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. We also launched new collections of abstracts from Cities as Built […]

42 elements added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List

On Thursday, December 12, 2019, the 14th session of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage announced additions to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. 42 elements were added to the list, including Date palm, knowledge, skills, traditions and practices, Byzantine Chant, Practices and craftsmanship associated with the Damascene rose in Al-Mrah in Syria, Malaysian Silat, Ak-kalpak craftsmanship, traditional knowledge and skills in making and wearing Kyrgyz men’s headwear, Kwagh-Hir theatrical performance from Nigeria, and many other cultural traditions in the Iran, Iraq, Kenya, the Philippines, Spain (and Mexico), Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan. Elements from 55 countries were included […]

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 […]

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 […]

Most popular resources in August 2019

August 2019. We’ve just posted lists of the most accessed Archnet resources for the month of August. As is often the case, the Archnet Timeline was the most accessed page, aside from the home page. In the run up to the August 29th announcement of the recipients of the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, many people checked out the collection devoted to the 20 shortlisted projects. The most watched video last month was a selection of Andalusian music recorded in 1959 by Paul Bowles in Ouezzane, Morocco; the most downloaded publication was a survey of the work of Charles Correa; […]

6 Recipients of the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture Announced

The six recipients of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) were announced today at a ceremony in Kazan, in the Republic of Tartarstan. The recipients are a revitalization of Muharraq, Bahrain highlighting the World Heritage site’s pearling history; an “amphibious” school in South Kanarchor, Bangladesh; the sustainably constructed Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, Palestine; the development of 328 public spaces for recreation in the Republic of Tartarstan; an extension of the campus of Alioune Diop University in Bambey, Senegal; and the restoration of an indigenous ecosystem in Sharjah, UAE. Recipients were announced by Irada Ayupova, Minister of Culture of the […]