Category Archives: All AKDC News

Nur Sobers-Khan appointed Program Head

We are thrilled to share the announcement that Nur Sobers-Khan has been appointed Program Head for the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT). Reporting to Emilie Hardman, Head of the Libraries Distinctive Collections (DDC), the Program Head is a critical leadership position responsible for stewarding and developing collections, services, and programs to support the information needs of the faculty, students, and researchers of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) in MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. It also provides oversight of Archnet in partnership with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and engages in other innovative collection […]

What was new and who was using Archnet in October?

58,272 users visited Archnet between October 1 and October 31, viewing a total of 286,946 pages, watching 140 videos, downloading 7,820 publications, and conducting 7,556 searches. The most-watched video was Close to Home: Al-Khimyah, written and directed by Prince Aly Muhammad Aga Khan, and revealing how a pile of rubble in Cairo became Al-Azhar Park, a 30-acre green space with lakes and fountains in the heart of the historic city, and its impact of the lives of residents in the area. The most downloaded publication continues to be Charles Correa, a survey of the architect‘s early work. You can find […]

Online Screening of 10 Days Before the Wedding, a new feature film from Yemen

For several years AKDC@MIT has sponsored a film series with the Center for Arabic Culture here in Boston. Though we have not been able to host in-person screenings since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have decided on a new way to continue this series online. In collaboration with CAC Boston and the Middle Eastern Studies Program at Wellesley College, we will be hosting our first virtual screening of the new movie 10 Days Before the Wedding (2018), the first feature film shot in Yemen since the start of the conflict in 2014. The movie is directed by independent […]

Archnet sees a significant rise in visitors during September

True to form, visitors to Archnet jumped by 24% from August to September. Though Archnet is intended as and has proven to be a resource for both practitioners and scholars of architecture, the number of visitors coming from academic domains increases significantly as the summer comes to an end, and learning management systems from universities start to refer visitors for the first time since the previous July. The number of pages per session in September 2020 rose by 4% over last year, with roughly comparable increases in the number of sessions per user, session duration, and the total number of […]

Urban October on Archnet

Situated on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, the city of Beirut, is one of the oldest in the world. Control of the area has been contested throughout its history, and these conflicts have taken their toll on the city’s built environment. But on August 4 the city around the port was rocked by a massive explosion unrelated to armed conflict. The explosion caused the death of hundreds and injuring thousands more. It also caused billions in property damage, leaving approximately 3000,000 homeless. Lebanese architect and scholar Ali Khodr is developing a survey on the Built Heritage of Lebanon for […]

New resources for teaching and learning about architecture

On March 12, just before the Aga Khan Documentation Center closed along with the rest of the campus due to the pandemic, we published “Resources for teaching and studying architecture during COVID-19 closures” on this site. Few other articles in this site have been visited as much as that one, and Archnet saw a significant increase in traffic that lasted through the rest of the academic year. We’ve also been busy since then, adding 62 sites, 151 publications, 42 videos, 1714 images, and 54 authority records to Archnet. We hope that some of those resources will prove useful to you […]

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 […]

New Video: Shiraz Allibhai Discusses the History and Development of Archnet

Shiraz Allibhai, Archnet Director from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), has been with Archnet since the beginning. In 1998, while heading up the Education Program, he was there when His Highness the Aga Khan, on a visit to MIT, expressed his contentment with the fruits of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA), but wished for a way to make those efforts resonate more within Muslim societies. William J. Mitchell, then Dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, asked for some time to look into the issue, ultimately proposing the resource that became Archnet. Archnet has […]

Endangered Heritage: An Online Panel of the A3-Archnet Collaborative

IMPORTANT UPDATE: REGISTRATION FOR THIS SESSION IS NOW CLOSED. The event is at capacity. If your registration was successfully processed, you will soon receive instructions on how to join. July 27, 2020 The A3-Archnet Collaborative for the Documentation of Africa’s built heritage will hold an online public panel on “Endangered Heritage,” July 31 at 16:30-18:30 WAT/11:30-13:30 EDT. The panel will include three presenters known for their work in cultural heritage preservation: Ṣọlá Akíntúndé, Founder Trustee, WASCHTrust (West Africa Shared Cultural Heritage Trust); Kuukuwa Manful, Principal Investigator for the Accra Archive: and Raj Yudhishthir Isar, Director of the Aga Khan Trust […]

Archnet in June 2020-The end of an unusual academic year!

Archnet staff published a total of 343 new records to Archnet.org. Highlights included 20 briefs on projects shortlisted in the 2019 cycle of the triennial Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA), and 315 images of Afghanistan, Syria, and Iran from the Aga Khan Visual Archive and Harvard University’s collection of photographs and video by the Baroness Marie-Thérèse Ullens de Schooten. Each AKAA project brief brings together documentation collected through the nomination and documentation processes, such as the on-site reports, graphic panels, images, and other information in a single document containing a wealth of information about the project, its history, design […]