Tag Archives: AKDC Archives

Happy International Dance Day from AKDC@MIT!

Happy International Dance Day! In 1982 the Dance Committee of the International Theatre Institute (ITI) decided to celebrate April 29, the anniversary of the pioneering French dancer and choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810) as a day “to celebrate dance, revel in the universality of this art form, cross all political, cultural and ethnic barriers, and bring people together with a common language – dance.” (International Dance Day – International Theatre Institute ITI. Accessed April 28, 2021. https://www.international-dance-day.org/internationaldanceday.html.) The Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC@MIT) exists to research and document the built environment of Muslim societies, but architecture does not exist […]

Happy Birthday Michel Écochard

Architect, archeologist, and urban planner Michel Écochard (d. 24 May 1985) would have been 115 on March 11, 2020! Écochard’s career began in 1932 when he was assigned to the Antiquities Service in Syria where he participated in the restoration of numerous historic monuments. Simultaneously, he served as a consulting architect to the Syrian government. It was during this period that he designed the Antioch Museum in what is now Antakya, Turkey. and in 1940 became Director of Urban Planning. He documented this period in albums he compiled on historic sites in Damascus, Aleppo, and across Syria. In 1946 he […]

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 […]