Category Archives: Archnet News

Women’s History Month on Archnet

Today, the 8th of March, is International Women’s Day. Since 1975 the day has been designated by the UN as a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities. (http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/) To mark the day, Archnet highlights the role of women in Islamic architecture and in the built environment of Muslim societies more generally. Click around the sliding tiles on our homepages to see monuments of Islamic architecture that were built through the generosity […]

Exhibition from the Archive of Paul Collart Includes Previously Unpublished Images of Palmyra

Archnet announces a new collection of black and white photographs taken by the Swiss archeologist Paul Collart (1902-1981) during travels in Syria, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and Turkey. The collection is curated by Lobna Montasser, Media and Documentation Officer at the office of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Geneva. It provides a representative sampling of Collart’s photography in the region, and features previously unpublished photographs taken while Collart was leading an excavation of Baal Shamim in Palmyra. Montasser selected the images in the Archnet collection from thousands of photographs in the Paul Collart archive at the Institute of Archaeology […]

Archnet’s Growing International Appeal

In last week’s article on the growth of Archnet in 2017, we noted the increasing globalization of Archnet’s user base, as evidenced by the fact that approximately 87% of Archnet users initiated their visit from outside of the United States. In this article we will look a bit more deeply into those figures. According to Google Analytics, Archnet received visitors from 208 countries and territories (as defined by Google) in 2017, literally an A to Z of countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. This this article compares statistics on sessions initiated in those 208 areas during the period of August 1 […]

2017 Growth in Archnet Resources

Approximately 12,357 records were published in Archnet between January 1 and December 31, 2017, increasing the total number of records by approximately 10%. While much of the new material expands existing collections, new collections added in 2017 include sketchbooks and other items form from the archive of architect and designer Ali Tayar, the Isfahan Urban History Project undertaken by Lisa Golombek, Renata Holod and Claus Breede between 1974 and 1976, and photographs from the scholarly archives of Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Curator Emerita, Department of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Yasser Tabbaa, a prominent scholar in Islamic art and […]

Archnet Online Office Hours: August 22, 2017

Join us on August 22, 2017 at 9:30 am EDT for the first in what we hope will be a continuing series of Archnet Online Office Hours. This 1 hour pilot session with Archnet Co-Director Sharon C. Smith and Archnet Content Manger Michael A. Toler. The session will begin with a brief demonstration of the most recent Archnet enhancements, followed by an extended Question and Answer session. The session will be in English, and headsets are required. Registration for this pilot session is limited to 30 the first 30 registered participants. Registration closes on August 14th at 11:59 pm EDT. […]

New Archnet Features

This morning’s Archnet update, the first of the 2017 development cycle, includes a number of enhancements intended to improve the user experience. Users will no longer have to drag, zoom, and click the map in order to apply country filters to a search. It is now possible to find and select countries simply by opening the Geo filter, typing a country name, and hitting the return key. Also in the realm of geolocation, users will find the site maps contain considerably more detail, often including place names written in local alphabets. Frequent users of social media will be happy to […]

New on Archnet: Islamic Heritage of Bangladesh

A new Archnet collection, The Islamic Heritage of Bangladesh, documents the architecture of 33 historic sites with detailed descriptions, photographs and, in some cases, drawings. The collection was developed by Dr. Mohammad Habib Reza, Assistant Professor, in the Department of Architecture at BRAC University in Bangladesh. The project was a collaboration between BRAC University, Archnet, and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Thousands of new records have been published on Archnet since May 1. See examples on this page.

New Exhibition: Red Monastery Church Restoration

A new Archnet exhibition highlights the interior of the Church of Saints Bishai and Bigol in the Sohag Province of Egypt. Perhaps better known as the Church of the Red Monastery because of the red brick walls used in the construction of the monastery, the church was established in the 4th c. as a center of the large monastic community in Upper Egypt. It is remarkable for the vividly colored paintings covering about eighty percent of the the interior. The photographs in this exhibition show the interior after a decade-long restoration effort of the American Research Center in Egypt. The collection also contains an introductory […]

13th Cycle Nominees for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture

Information on and images of 137 projects nominated during the 13th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) is now available on Archnet. The prestigious prize is awarded every 3 years to projects that set new standards of excellence in architecture, planning practices, historic preservation and landscape architecture. The diverse list of AKAA nominees includes a wide variety of projects in more than 40 countries around the world. There are rehabilitation and construction projects in Tunisia, Spain, Palestine and Bahrain; housing projects in Yemen, Turkey, and Indonesia; educational and cultural facilities in Kenya, Iran, Australia, and Algeria and Afghanistan; mosques in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, […]

Highlighting the cultural production of seven countries

This week, Archnet highlights the built environment of the countries included in President Trump’s executive order of 27 January 2017 barring citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the United States. More than 18,000 Archnet records are tagged with one of the seven countries, including authority records, sites, cities, publications, images, and videos. While “Voices from Seven Countries“, displayed in the various locations of the MIT Libraries, highlights materials that can be checked out by anyone with borrowing privileges, the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC@MIT) holdings contain rare and specific materials related to all the currently […]