Written by Lee Adair Lawrence
Photographs and diagrams of architectural projects in mind-spinning variety cover the walls of Howard University’s Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. There is a luxurious, wood-crafted private home in Malaysia, a rehabilitated slum in Indonesia, restorations at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, and a new, vibrantly colorful arts center in Senegal. There is a leper hospital in India, a reforestation project in Turkey and a skyscraper in Malaysia. It is quickly apparent that the show’s title, “Architecture for a Changing World,” tells only half the story, for this survey of the 71 projects that have won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) since its inception in 1980 shows that architecture is changing at least as much as the world, and that the AKAA has become a well-established, activist voice for a broader architectural vision.
The award has its roots in the Aga Khan’s sadness at the state of architecture in the Islamic world of the 1970’s, where infatuation with the steel-and-glass “international style” resulted in buildings that took little notice of—and often intentionally disregarded—local materials and technologies. The condition of “the built environment”—buildings in their broader physical, social and cultural contexts—was no better. “It was clear,” the Aga Khan told architectural journalist Mildred Schmertz in 1998, “that Islamic communities had lost some of their extraordinary inheritance of competence and knowledge in the realm of architecture.”
To help restore “architectural excellence,” he established an award that from the outset defined things differently. More conventional architectural awards, such as the Pritzker Architectural Prize or the Gold Medal Awards of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), largely laud the accomplishments of individual architects. The AKAA, on the other hand, recognizes projects. While other prizes stress design, the AKAA from the start adopted criteria that include, for example, the traditional craftsmanship that restores a mosque, the environmental creativity that devises sustainable solutions to problems of sewerage, a project’s promotion of social harmony, or its revitalizing effect on a village or urban area. Design is not ignored, of course, but it is understood to be an idea that, at its best, integrates local, traditional and vernacular crafts and styles with the needs of contemporary life.
Complete at the source: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200101/shaking.up.architecture.htm
Ismailimail 