Archnet > Publication > Report of the 2016 Award Master Jury

Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs - <p>For the 13th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Master Jury <span lang="EN-US">embraced the notion of plurality,
exploring not just projects in diverse contexts but the boundaries of the discipline itself, recognising that new knowledge
sometimes emerges in the lines between
categories. For established practitioners, this posed a particular dilemma: how to identify
merit in projects
whose very terms force us to question the limits </span><span lang="EN-US">of our understanding. The traditional categories of our discipline – corporate, cutting-edge, </span><span lang="EN-US">infrastructure, socially
responsive, environmentally sound
– are not as fixed
or concrete as they
</span><span lang="EN-US">once seemed.</span></p><p>The six Award recipients, arrived at after long and sometimes
heated discussion, accurately reflect the wide range of entries: a pedestrian bridge
that privileges use over form;
a sacred space that plays
inventively with tradition; a project that is at once landscape and building; a
bold, contemporary insertion into a traditional setting; a diminutive library
operating at a much larger micro-urban scale, and an urban
park that provides
new forms of public space. In such a context,
a universal language
of architecture no longer seems appropriate: what remains are creative and often modest
site-specific responses that generate new vocabularies of their
own.</p><p></p><ul><li>Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka, Bangladesh<br></li><li>Friendship Centre<span lang="EN-US">,</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Gaibandha,</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Bangladesh</span><br></li><li>Micro Yuan'er Children’s
Library and Art Centre<span lang="EN-US">,</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Beijing,</span><span lang="EN-US"> China</span><br></li><li>Superkilen<span lang="EN-US">,</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Copenhagen, Denmark </span><br></li><li>Tabiat <span lang="EN-US">Pedestrian Bridge</span><span lang="EN-US">,</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Tehran,</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Iran </span><br></li><li>Issam<span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Fares</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Institute</span><span lang="EN-US">,</span><span lang="EN-US"> </span><span lang="EN-US">Beirut, Lebanon</span></li></ul><p></p>

Type

report

Year

2016

For the 13th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Master Jury embraced the notion of plurality, exploring not just projects in diverse contexts but the boundaries of the discipline itself, recognising that new knowledge sometimes emerges in the lines between categories. For established practitioners, this posed a particular dilemma: how to identify merit in projects whose very terms force us to question the limits of our understanding. The traditional categories of our discipline – corporate, cutting-edge, infrastructure, socially responsive, environmentally sound – are not as fixed or concrete as they once seemed.

The six Award recipients, arrived at after long and sometimes heated discussion, accurately reflect the wide range of entries: a pedestrian bridge that privileges use over form; a sacred space that plays inventively with tradition; a project that is at once landscape and building; a bold, contemporary insertion into a traditional setting; a diminutive library operating at a much larger micro-urban scale, and an urban park that provides new forms of public space. In such a context, a universal language of architecture no longer seems appropriate: what remains are creative and often modest site-specific responses that generate new vocabularies of their own.