Category Archives: Archnet News

Most popular resources in August 2019

August 2019. We’ve just posted lists of the most accessed Archnet resources for the month of August. As is often the case, the Archnet Timeline was the most accessed page, aside from the home page. In the run up to the August 29th announcement of the recipients of the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, many people checked out the collection devoted to the 20 shortlisted projects. The most watched video last month was a selection of Andalusian music recorded in 1959 by Paul Bowles in Ouezzane, Morocco; the most downloaded publication was a survey of the work of Charles Correa; […]

6 Recipients of the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture Announced

The six recipients of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) were announced today at a ceremony in Kazan, in the Republic of Tartarstan. The recipients are a revitalization of Muharraq, Bahrain highlighting the World Heritage site’s pearling history; an “amphibious” school in South Kanarchor, Bangladesh; the sustainably constructed Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, Palestine; the development of 328 public spaces for recreation in the Republic of Tartarstan; an extension of the campus of Alioune Diop University in Bambey, Senegal; and the restoration of an indigenous ecosystem in Sharjah, UAE. Recipients were announced by Irada Ayupova, Minister of Culture of the […]

Archnet marks International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, August 9

To mark International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples on August 9, Archnet is highlighting the architecture of indigenous people. The background images on the site are photographs of the Amin Mosque, a Uyghur mosque built in the 18th century in northwest China; and a street in the Old Town of Ghadames, an oasis town on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Libya. Click the images and text on the homepage tiles to learn about more resources devoted to the theme. There is also an Archnet collection that gathers select resources focusing on manifestations of indigenous culture and vernacular […]

Archnet Word of Day: “ablaq”

Yesterday Archnet social media featured the first of a new series of “Word of the Day” updates. The first word is ablaq, defined by the Dictionary of Islamic Architecture as “term used to describe alternating light and dark courses of masonry.” In the image to the left you can see five examples of the style from including a hammam in Aleppo, a palace in Damascus, a mosque that is now a cathedral in Cordoba, and mosques in Tripoli (Lebanon), and a mosque complex in Damascus. The next word in the series, “almena” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Architecture as […]

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 […]

AKDC Program Head to participate in kickoff of apprenticeship program of the Revolving Art Incubator in Lagos, Nigeria

LAGOS, Nigeria – From 12 – 13 July 2019, Revolving Art Incubator will host Michael Toler, Head of the Aga Khan Documentation Centre, MIT Libraries (AKDC@MIT) and Jelili Atiku, multimedia artist and Visiting Professor at Brown University, Kola Tubosun, writer, linguist and Founder of Yorubaname.com, Judith Okonkwo, Creative Director of Imisi 3D Lab and Oliver Enwonwu, Director of Omenka Gallery and Trustee of Ben Enwonwu Foundation to facilitate the commencement of our apprenticeships programme with archiving and documenting as its central theme. The apprenticeship programme at RAI represent one-leg of our 3-pronged extroversion agenda; the other two being the outposts […]

Call for submissions: Pedagogical Materials for Teaching about Architecture in Muslim Societies

As the academic year draws to a close, the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT invites you to share your best course materials in Archnet’s Pedagogy Collection. This collection contains open access materials for teaching about the built environment of Muslim societies. Materials may be geared toward any level from kindergarten to graduate school, and they may approach the topic from the perspective of any discipline. We are interested in syllabi, lesson plans, reading lists, presentations, recorded lectures, course materials, scholarly articles, etc. All material received will be evaluated by experts before inclusion. Please note, all material will be […]

April by the numbers

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 […]

New Archnet collection documents monuments of Algerian architecture

“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 […]

20 Projects shortlisted for the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture

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 […]