Eighteen years in the planning, the $300m Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre complex in Toronto consists of two important buildings by octogenarian master architects – Japan’s Fumihiko Maki for the museum and India’s Charles Correa for the centre – in a new city park by Lebanon-based landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic. Exhibition design is by Adrien Gardère from Paris, so this is all as international as could be. The aim is to celebrate the artistic, intellectual and scientific achievements of Muslim societies from ancient times to the present, and to serve the Ismaili community of the area.
… Correa’s more concerned with form. And the form and materials he has chosen for the Ismaili Centre prayer hall – a modified, asymmetrical pyramid of twin-wall translucent opaque glass sandwiching a lean steel structure, rising from a circular podium and of course aligned towards Mecca – turns the building into a beacon at night.
Maki’s museum was commissioned after Correa’s Ismaili Centre. Although the two buildings are so very different, Maki makes one important visual link, aligning his great entrance portal with the prow of Correa’s prayer hall, so framing it as a view from within the museum. Djurovic’s landscape is the other unifying factor, of course, on this 6.8ha site.
IN NUMBERS6.8ha site area 0.9ha buildings footprint 10,500m2 museum gross floor area 8,300m2 Ismaili Centre gross floor area 350 seats in auditorium 19.8m height of auditorium roof 20m height of prayer hall roof |
CreditsMuseum architect Maki and Associates, Tokyo Ismaili Centre architect Charles Correa and Associates, Mumbai Landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic Landscape Architecture, Lebanon Architect of record Moriyama and Teshima, Toronto Exhibition design Studio Adrien Gardère, Paris Contractor Carillion Construction |
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