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The Aga Khan Award for Architecture
Tenth Award Cycle, 2005–2007
March 31–May 21, 2008, Gund Hall Gallery
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| Royal Netherlands Embassy, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | School in Rudrapur, Dinajpur, Bangladesh | |
| (click on images to view larger) | Images courtesy of the AKAA. |
The grand opening of the exhibition, curated by GSD Professor Hashim Sarkis, will coincide with a lecture on April 2nd on the Aga Khan Awards presented by Homi Bhabha, Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University and a member of the Tenth Cycle Master Jury. His lecture will be followed by a discussion among members of the Award’s Steering Committee, Jury, and several recipients. The event will take place at 6:30pm in Piper Auditorium in Gund Hall, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The exhibition is organized by the Aga Khan Program at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Humanities Center at Harvard University, in collaboration with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture
Throughout its thirty-year history—and ten Award cycles—the Aga Khan Award for Architecture has identified and celebrated built projects in Muslim societies that demonstrate design’s important role in social and economic development. Given the breadth of this pursuit and the geographic and cultural heterogeneity of the Muslim world, it has become customary in every cycle to expect a wide range of projects that share sensitivity to their contexts and understanding of the developmental impact of design.
This cycle’s nine awards do not fail the test of diversity. They range in location from Central Africa to Malaysia, and in scale from an entire town to a small public square. They all demonstrate that socioeconomic development is linked to innovations in the process of construction.
The exhibition brings the awarded projects to the United States for the first time. The projects are:
Restoration of the Amiriya Complex
Rada, Yemen
Royal Netherlands Embassy*
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Central Market
Koudougou, Burkina Faso
Moulmein Rise Residential Tower
Singapore
Rehabilitation of the Walled City
Nicosia, Cyprus
School in Rudrapur*
Dinajpur, Bangladesh
Rehabilitation of the City of Shibam
Wadi Hadhramaut, Yemen
Samir Kassir Square
Beirut, Lebanon
University of Technology Petronas
Bandar Seri Iskandar, Malaysia
For more information about the Award for Architecture, please visit:
www.akdn.org/architecture.
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture: 1977–2007
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, established in 1977 by His Highness the Aga Khan, recognizes examples of architectural achievement that encompass contemporary design, social housing, community improvement and development, landscape and environmental issues, as a well as restoration, reuse and area conservation. The Award seeks to identify and encourage building concepts that successfully address the needs and aspirations of societies in which Muslims have a significant presence and reward those projects that demonstrate design excellence, cultural awareness, and social and economic responsiveness, even if they are far from the mainstream of architectural criticism and thought.
There are no absolute standards against which the winning projects can be measured, but projects must have been completed and in use for a minimum of one year and a maximum of twelve years. The understanding that architecture has a social contract is at the heart of the Award’s mission.
Organized on triennial cycles, the Award is governed by a Steering Committee chaired by the Aga Khan. The Steering Committee in turn selects a nine-member Master Jury that chooses the Award recipients from a series of several hundred nominations that come from a broad network of international professionals. Master Jury members are selected from disciplines throughout the humanities, bringing together architects, planners, historians, philosophers, sociologists, and artists.
The Award is unique in its procedures because projects short-listed by each Master Jury are examined by an On-Site Review team, according to the Jury’s brief for further information and a critical assessment of the project’s fulfillment of its program. These procedures ensure that the Jury can make informed decisions, rather than relying on limited visual presentations. In the review of the projects, and in the final selection of Award recipients, the Master Jury is fully autonomous and its decisions are final. The Award has completed ten cycles since 1977, and documentation has been compiled more than 7,500 building projects throughout the world.
Related:
Harvard Gazette article on Aga Khan winners, April 10, 2008 >>
Homi Bhabha lecture information, April 2, 2008 >>