Category Archives: All AKDC News

20 Projects shortlisted for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture

A shortlist of 20 projects competing for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) were announced today in a ceremony held in Kazan, Russia, and are now featured on Archnet. Chosen from over 380 nominations, the projects will compete for the prize which recognized projects “deemed to new standards of excellence in architecture, planning practices, historic preservation and landscape architecture.” The Award was established “to identify and encourage building concepts that address the needs of communities in which Muslims have a significant presence.” The diverse shortlist includes educational, residential, social, cultural, commercial, and municipal structures, as well as urban […]

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, […]

World Interfaith Harmony Week on Archnet

Since 20 October 2010 when the UN General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/65/5, the first week in February has been designated World Interfaith Harmony Week. The week is intended to promote harmony between all people regardless of their faith. In its statement setting “Sustainable Development through Interfaith Harmony” as the 2019 theme, the UN page points out the importance of peaceful relations between faith traditions providing for the well-being of people around the world. At the core of all the faith systems and traditions is the recognition that we are all in this together and that we need to love and support […]

Archive of John and Caroline Williams

In 2017 AKDC@MIT received over 18,000 slides taken by John A. and Caroline Williams, author of Islamic Monuments in Cairo: The Practical Guide. The images in the collection document sites in Egypt and across the Islamic world over multiple decades. Currently a sampling of about 700 are available online, with more are coming soon. Of course the entire collection is available the Aga Khan Documentation Center for consultation, research, or use in publications. Learn more about the collections of the Aga Khan Documentation Center on our website.

Throwback Thursday at AKDC

Do you remember the LaserDisc? This video disc could be considered Archnet 0.1, in that it was an early vehicle for dissemination of visual resources on Islamic architecture. “Images of Islamic Architecture. The Aga Khan Collection was a project of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT and Harvard, released in 1985. It contained more than 30,000 images of Islamic architecture arranged by region. Invented in 1958, the LaserDisc became available to consumers in 1978. Movies and concerts on LaserDisc were found in most record and electronic stores, but the format never really caught on, so it din’t […]

AKDC and Project Cornelia receive grant to develop LayerCake

The Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT and Project Cornelia at the University of Leuven are pleased to announce that they have been rewarded a MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Global Seed Fund grant for workshops in both Leuven and Cambridge to study networks of cultural influence among artists, followed by a symposium and the deployment of student-created artist network maps. The studies will use linked open data sets and a version of LayerCake – a web app that maps narratives and collections of objects across geographic space and time – modified to show network relationships between points […]