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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 […]
On May 9, AKDC’s Visual Resources Librarian Matt Saba delivers the weekly research seminar at the Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East, University of Oxford. Matt will speak about the architectural decorations made from marble excavated at the early Islamic palace-city of Samarra, located in Iraq. While Samarra is famous for its carved stucco revetments, its architectural marble is rarely discussed. One reason for its neglect is that much was lost, first in antiquity and also after the site’s initial excavation in 1911-14. An overdue survey of the way this and other semi-precious […]
The Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT), is seeking a video assistant to edit video to be posted on Archnet.org, an open access, scholarly resource focused on architecture, urbanism, environmental and landscape design, visual culture, and conservation issues, with a particular focus on the Muslim world. Duties: Create video for two projects: • The Music of Morocco Project – Creation of video slideshows for uploading digitized versions of audio recordings made in Morocco, 1959-1962. Examples can be seen in the collection on Archnet, but videos still need to be created for more than 1/2 the recordings. • The Architect’s […]
Archnet has just published lists of the most popular publications, search terms, and videos for the period of April 1-30. During that period, more than 52,000 users accessed more than 265,000 pages in the site. Visitors came from 186 countries or territories Google recognized countries or territories, with the larges group, nearly 1 in 5, coming from India. They are attracted by the rich library of materials accessible anywhere there is an internet connection. 7,564 publications were downloaded between April 1st and 30th, the most popular of which was a 1985 article on “Contemporary Kuwaiti Houses,” originally published in the […]
“Moorish Monuments of Algeria: richness and diversity,” is a new Archnet collection documenting 27 of the most prominent historic architectural sites in Algeria. The Aga Khan Documentation Center of the MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT) commissioned Dr. Amine Kasmi, a conservation architect and associate professor at the Department of Architecture, University of Tlemcen in Algeria, to develop and curate the collection documenting “architecture produced by the local population of the central Maghreb.” Structures in the collection span the history of the region from the 3rd century BCE through the first half of the 20th c. Like “The Islamic Heritage of Bangladesh, the […]
A shortlist of 20 projects competing for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) were announced today in a ceremony held in Kazan, Russia, and are now featured on Archnet. Chosen from over 380 nominations, the projects will compete for the prize which recognized projects “deemed to new standards of excellence in architecture, planning practices, historic preservation and landscape architecture.” The Award was established “to identify and encourage building concepts that address the needs of communities in which Muslims have a significant presence.” The diverse shortlist includes educational, residential, social, cultural, commercial, and municipal structures, as well as urban […]
The Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT), is pleased to announce the public release of LayerCake, an interactive tool for mapping data points across time and space. The LayerCake project was initiated by Sharon C. Smith, Ph.D., Head of Distinctive Collections at Arizona State University, and former AKDC@MIT Program Head, who served as the PI for the project. Interim AKDC Program Head, Michael Toler, Ph.D. now serves as the project PI. Working with designer and programmer, James Yamada (MDes, Harvard GSD, 2014), the tool is currently under development at AKDC@MIT. As a 3-axes mapping tool, LayerCake enables users to […]
According to Google Analytics, there were 274,014 unique page views in March 2019. Click here to see the most popular publications, videos, and search terms for the month.
It he were alive today, architect and urban planner Michel Écochard would be celebrating his 114th birthday. Born March 11, 1905 in Paris, he went to work for the Colonial Antiquities Service of Syria and Lebanon almost immediately after graduating from the École des Beaux-Arts. By the time of his death on May 24, 1985 he had received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) for the restoration of the Azem Palace in Damascus, and carried out projects in Cameroon, the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Guinea, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, Syria, and Turkey. In the mid-1980s Écochard donated […]
