Tag Archives: AKAA

May 7 AFIKRA Salon at MIT to feature Aga Khan Collections Curator

Aga Khan Collections Curator Rami Alafandi will be presenting on the work of the Aga Khan Documentation Center and the Aga Khan Development Network in Vol. 6 of the afikra Boston salon on Sunday, May 7, at 6 pm in Room 3-133 on the MIT Campus. AFIKRA salons are in-person events held in cities worldwide that bring people together to learn about the histories and cultures of the Arab world. The salon is free and open to the public; registration is required.

20 projects in 16 countries, from Indonesia to Cape Verde, Shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture

Geneva, Switzerland, 2 June 2022 – The Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) today announced 20 shortlisted projects for the 2022 Award cycle. The projects will compete for a share of the US$ 1 million prize, one of the largest in architecture. The 20 shortlisted projects were selected by an independent Master Jury from a pool of 463 projects nominated for the 15th 3-year cycle (2020-2022) of the prestigious award. Independent experts, including architects, conservation specialists, planners and structural engineers, have conducted rigorous on-site reviews for each project . The Master Jury meets again this summer to examine the on-site […]

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 […]

What’s new in Archnet for April 2020?

In 2003 Archnet went online with the goal of facilitating teaching, scholarship, and professional work of high quality by providing provide ready access to unique, high quality, visual and textual resources on the built environment, particularly that of Muslim societies and the wider developing world. 17 years later, that mission is proving more important than ever, as a global pandemic is keeping more than 90% of the world’s students away from their educational institutions. From elementary school to post-graduate education, people are teaching, studying, and researching remotely. We are gratified to know that Archnet seems to be helping some people […]

Rifat Chadirji, one of the “most influential shapers of modern Baghdad,” dead at 93

The staff of the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT), is saddened to learn of the death of the great Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji (December 6, 1926-April 10, 2020). Chadirji was “a thinker, author, critic, & rationalist architect with a refined aesthetic sensitivity, he devised a particular approach to architecture that he called international regionalism,” according to Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor and the Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT Rabbat went on to characterize the deceased architect as “one of the most influential shapers of modern Baghdad and an original theorist of architecture […]

See what was most popular on Archnet in September

Our most accessed resources lists were shaken up a bit in September by two things: publication of recordings of Moroccan music made in 1959 by Paul Bowles in town of Ouezzane at the base of the Moroccan Rif Mountains and, even more so, by the announcement of the six projects to receive the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in the 14th triennial cycle of the prestigious award. The 2019 Award Recipients collection was made available to Archnet users the very day the announcement was made in Kazan, Tatarstan. As has been the case for more than a year now, a […]

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 […]

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 […]