WINNERS OF 2016 AGA KHAN AWARD FOR ARCHITECTURE ANNOUNCED
The winners of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture were announced today at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi. The venue for the winners’ ceremony, the World Heritage Site Al Jahili fort in Al-Ain, was also announced by Awaidha Murshed Al Marar, the chairman of the department of municipal affairs and transport in the UAE. The winners of this year’s prize include the Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka, designed by Marina Tabassum; Zaha Hadid Architects’ new building for the American University of Beirut’s campus; and a new multilevel bridge across a busy motorway in Tehran, designed by Diba Tensile Architecture, Leila Araghian, and Alireza Behzadi.
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture was established in 1977 to identify and encourage ideas for buildings that successfully address the needs and aspirations of communities in which Muslims have a significant presence. Prizes have been given to projects across the world. During this year’s nomination process, more than nine thousand building projects were documented. Many architects have either won the award or served on its jury or committee, including Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Charles Correa, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, and Hassan Fathy.
The jury this year selected from 348 nominated projects in sixty-nine countries. The nine members of the jury were Suad Amiry, founder of the Riwaq Center for Architectural Conservation, Ramallah; Emre Arolat, founder of EAA-Emre Arolat Architecture, Istanbul; Akeel Bilgrami, the Sydney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York; Luis Fernàndez-Galiano, an editor at Architectura Viva, Madrid; Hameed Haroon, CEO of Herald Publications, Karachi; Lesley Lokko, head of the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg; Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge; Dominique Perrault, founder of Dominique Perrault Architecture, Paris; and Hossein Rezai, director of Web Structures, Singapore.
For a full list of winners, see below
Marina Tabassum, Bait Ur Rouf Mosque (Bangladesh)
Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury/URBANA, Friendship Center in Gaibandha (Bangladesh)
ZAO/standardarchitecture and Zhang Ke, Cha’er Hutong Children’s Library and Art Center, Beijing (China)
BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Topotek 1, and Superflex; Superkilen, Copenhagen (Denmark)
Diba Tensile Architecture, Leila Araghian, and Alireza Behzadi; Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge, Tehran (Iran)
Zaha Hadid Architects, Issam Fares Institute, Beirut (Lebanon)
