Tag Archives: AKPIA

Archnet Content Manager to deliver the first AKPIA lecture of the fall

Archnet Content Manager, Michael Toler, will be giving the first lecture of the Fall 2020 AKPIA@MIT Lecture Series on Monday, September 21, 6 PM (Eastern). His presentation, “Tangier at the Crossroads: Memories of Cosmopolitanism and Dreams of Technological Modernity,” looks at the urban development of Tangier, Morocco at two key periods in the history of the city, the early 20th century when it was designated an International Zone, and at the beginning of the 21st century when the city once again started a major expansion. The presentation considers the causes behind these transformative periods and the impacts. Read the abstract […]

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 […]

AKDC Visual Resources Librarian to lecture on Palace Building and Poetry at Abbasid Samarra

Dr. Matt Saba, Visual Resources Librarian in the Aga Khan Documentation Center, will speak on “Durability through Verse: Palace Building and Poetry at Abbasid Samarra,” at 6 pm on Monday, February 10 in 3-133 at MIT. The presentation “examines the relationship between palace building and poetry writing at Samarra, the capital of the Abbasid Empire in Iraq from 836 to 892 CE.” and is part of the Spring 2020 lectures of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. The series continues on February 24 with a presentation by Farrokh Derakhshani, Director of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, […]

New in Pedagogy: Monuments of Islamic Architecture

The Archnet Pedagogy Collection now includes course materials from Monuments of Islamic Architecture presented by Professors Gulru Necipoglu and David Roxburgh of Harvard University. The course presents an introduction to ten iconic monuments of the Islamic world from the beginning of Islam to the early modern period. It introduces various types of building-mosques, palaces, multifunctional complexes-and city types and the factors that shaped them, artistic, patronal, socio-political, religio-cultural, and economic. Each case study is divided into two lectures. The first presents the monument or city by “walking” through it; the second is devoted to themes elicited from the example, developed […]

New on Archnet: José Luis Argüello, AKPIA Posters (2001-2016)

A virtual version of the exhibit José Luis Argüello, AKPIA Posters (2001-2016) is now available on Archnet. Curated by Sharon C. Smith, AKDC@MIT Program Head, and introduced by Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor and the Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT (AKPIA@MIT), the exhibit contains examples of posters for AKPIA events and courses over a span of 15 years. In addition to posters like those in this exhibition, José Luis Argüello also designs the graphics for the AKPIA@MIT website