Category Archives: Archnet News

AKDC Program Head to present in a symposium on The Architecture of Migration

Michael Toler will present on “International Tangier: Stagnation and Growth in the 20th Century” in a Symposium on “The Architecture of Migration, Clues of Transcultural Exchanges in the Mediterranean Built Environment,” July 16th-17th at the Leicester School of Architecture, De Montfort University in the UK. The symposium is organized by Beniamino Polimeni, a researcher, designer and an architectural conservator who was a 2013 postdoctoral fellow in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic architecture at MIT, and Yasser Megahed is a Lecturer at Leicester School of Architecture, UK. Full organizer biographies are available on the conference website. The symposium comes at […]

AKDC Program Head to participate in kickoff of apprenticeship program of the Revolving Art Incubator in Lagos, Nigeria

LAGOS, Nigeria – From 12 – 13 July 2019, Revolving Art Incubator will host Michael Toler, Head of the Aga Khan Documentation Centre, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT) and Jelili Atiku, multimedia artist and Visiting Professor at Brown University, Kola Tubosun, writer, linguist and Founder of Yorubaname.com, Judith Okonkwo, Creative Director of Imisi 3D Lab and Oliver Enwonwu, Director of Omenka Gallery and Trustee of Ben Enwonwu Foundation to facilitate the commencement of our apprenticeships programme with archiving and documenting as its central theme. The apprenticeship programme at RAI represent one-leg of our 3-pronged extroversion agenda; the other two being the outposts […]

Call for submissions: Pedagogical Materials for Teaching about Architecture in Muslim Societies

As the academic year draws to a close, the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT invites you to share your best course materials in Archnet’s Pedagogy Collection. This collection contains open access materials for teaching about the built environment of Muslim societies. Materials may be geared toward any level from kindergarten to graduate school, and they may approach the topic from the perspective of any discipline. We are interested in syllabi, lesson plans, reading lists, presentations, recorded lectures, course materials, scholarly articles, etc. All material received will be evaluated by experts before inclusion. Please note, all material will be […]

April by the numbers

Archnet has just published lists of the most popular publications, search terms, and videos for the period of April 1-30. During that period, more than 52,000 users accessed more than 265,000 pages in the site. Visitors came from 186 countries or territories Google recognized countries or territories, with the larges group, nearly 1 in 5, coming from India. They are attracted by the rich library of materials accessible anywhere there is an internet connection. 7,564 publications were downloaded between April 1st and 30th, the most popular of which was a 1985 article on “Contemporary Kuwaiti Houses,” originally published in the […]

New Archnet collection documents monuments of Algerian architecture

“Moorish Monuments of Algeria: richness and diversity,” is a new Archnet collection documenting 27 of the most prominent historic architectural sites in Algeria. The Aga Khan Documentation Center of the MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT) commissioned Dr. Amine Kasmi, a conservation architect and associate professor at the Department of Architecture, University of Tlemcen in Algeria, to develop and curate the collection documenting “architecture produced by the local population of the central Maghreb.” Structures in the collection span the history of the region from the 3rd century BCE through the first half of the 20th c. Like “The Islamic Heritage of Bangladesh, the […]

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 […]

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 […]