Tag Archives: Morocco

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Audio from the AKDC/TALIM Seminar on Digital Documentation of Moroccan Cultural Heritage being made available online

In April Michael A. Toler, Archnet Content Manager, and Sharon C. Smith, Program Head of the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC@MIT) traveled to Morocco for a workshop and seminar organized by AKDC@MIT and the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM). Following these events Smith and Toler traveled to other cities in Morocco to discuss possibilities for collaboration. The workshop and seminar, held at TALIM April 11-12, focused on digital preservation of cultural heritage in Northern Morocco, were attended by researchers, scholars, preservationists, and representatives of cultural heritage institutions including universities, libraries, government and non-governmental institutions with a focus on preservation. The facilities […]

AKDC Organizes Workshop and Seminar on Cultural Heritage in Morocco

The Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC@MIT), in collaboration with the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM) to organize a workshop and seminar on the topic of “Documenting Cultural Heritage in Morocco.” The workshop, to be held on April 11, considers standards and best practices for documenting and presenting cultural heritage, and includes participants from museums, heritage sites, and cultural institutions throughout Morocco. The seminar will be held the following day, and focus on documenting, preserving, and raising awareness of architectural heritage in northern Morocco. The seminar is generously sponsored by OCP Group. Sharon C. Smith, AKDC […]

100,000 images on Archnet

75 images were published on Archnet yesterday, March 22, 2017, bringing the total number of published images published to over 100,000. The newly added images include photographs by Daniel Waugh, Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, Seattle, and editor of The Silk Road, depicting of an 8th century monumental mosques in the historic city of Isfahan, Iran; and photographs by James Llewellyn, a student at Wake Forest University, showing the facades, interiors, and courtyards of four mosques constructed during the 20th century in the modern metropolis of Casablanca, Morocco.

Virtual Exhibition: Tangier Then and Now

The exhibition Tangier Then and Now is now available on Archnet. The collection, an expanded version of the exhibit International Tangier on display in Rotch Library through December 27th, contains selected, edited photographs from the collection of glass negatives of the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, paired with photographs from 1976-1977, and labels with contemporary images.

International Tangier: Exhibit in Rotch Library

Images from the early 20th and 21st century on display For centuries European powers battled one another and Moroccan forces for control of the city of Tangier, strategically positioned on the Straits of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. In 1924 an agreement made the city a demilitarized “International Zone,” administered by European representatives, yet still nominally under Moroccan sovereignty. With the exception of a period of five year occupation by the Spanish during World War II, some variation of this arrangement remained in place until the city was returned to Moroccan sovereignty in 1956. An exhibition […]