2016 Aga Khan Awards for Architecture announced

The winners of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture were announced today in a ceremony in Abu Dhabi. The venue for the winners’ ceremony, the Al Jahili fort in Al-Ain, was also announced by His Excellency Awaidha Murshed Al Marar, Chairman of Department of Municipal Affairs and Transport and a member of the Executive Council of Abu Dhabi.

Friendship Centre, Gaibandha (Architect: Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA). Photograph © Rajesh Vora

The winners are:

BANGLADESH

Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka (Architect: Marina Tabassum).
A refuge for spirituality in urban Dhaka, selected for its beautiful use of natural light.
Friendship Centre, Gaibandha (Architect: Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA).
A community centre which makes a virtue of an area susceptible to flooding in rural Bangladesh.

CHINA

Hutong Children’s Library and Art Centre, Beijing (Architect: ZAO / standardarchitecture / Zhang Ke).
A children’s library selected for its embodiment of contemporary life in the traditional courtyard residences of Beijing’s Hutongs.

DENMARK

Superkilen, Copenhagen (Architects: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, Topotek 1 and Superflex)
A public space promoting integration across lines of ethnicity, religion and culture.

IRAN

Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge, Tehran (Architect: Diba Tensile Architecture / Leila Araghian, Alireza Behzadi)
A multi-level bridge spanning a busy motorway has created a dynamic new urban space.

LEBANON

Issam Fares Institute, Beirut (Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects)
A new building for the American University of Beirut’s campus, radical in composition but respectful of its traditional context.

The Venue for the Award Ceremony

Ceremonies to announce the winning projects and mark the close of each triennial cycle are always held in settings selected for their architectural and cultural importance to the Muslim world. In 2016, the ceremony will be held at the Al Jahili Fort, a World Heritage Site in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi.

Construction of Al Jahili Fort began in 1891 under Sheikh Zayed the First. Completed in 1898, it remained a residence of the Al Nahyan family for many years. It underwent a comprehensive
rehabilitation between 2007 and 2008 by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage with the collaboration of Eike Roswag, an Aga Khan Award for Architecture winner in 2007. The Fort was declared a World Heritage Site in 2011.

Previous venues for Award ceremonies encompass many of the most illustrious architectural achievements in the Muslim world, including Shalimar Gardens in Lahore (1980), Topkapi Palace in Istanbul (1983), Badi’ Palace in Marrakech (1986), the Citadel of Saladin in Cairo (1989), Registan Square in Samarkand (1992), Karaton Surakarta in Solo (1995), the Alhambra in Granada (1998), the Citadel of Aleppo (2001) and the gardens of Emperor Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi (2004).

About the Aga Khan Award for Architecture

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture was established by His Highness the Aga Khan in 1977 to identify and encourage building concepts that successfully addressed the needs and aspirations of communities in which Muslims have a significant presence. Prizes have been given to projects across the world, from France to China. Architects and planners from New York to Dhaka have received one of 116 awards. During the nomination process, more than 9,000 building projects were documented.

Over the course of the last 39 years, most of the great architects of our time have either won the Award or served on its Master Jury or Steering Committee, from Zaha Hadid to Norman Foster, Charles Correa to Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel to Hassan Fathy.

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture selects projects – from slum upgrading to high rise “green” buildings – that not only exhibit architectural excellence but also improve the overall quality of life. Because these achievements typically involved successful collaboration between many people, the Award recognises mayors, builders, clients, master craftsmen, engineers and end-users – as well as architects.

The 2016 Master Jury

The Master Jury (please see the biographies of Master Jury members) was completely independent in the selection it made from the 348 nominated projects in 69 countries. Projects commissioned by the Aga Khan or any of the institutions of the Aga Khan Development Network were ineligible. The nine members of the 2016 Master Jury are:

Suad Amiry, Founder, Riwaq Centre for Architectural Conservation, Ramallah; Emre Arolat, Founder, EAA – Emre Arolat Architecture, Istanbul; Akeel Bilgrami, Sydney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York; Luis Fernàndez-Galiano, Editor, Architectura Viva, Madrid; Hameed Haroon, Chief Executive Officer, Herald Publications, Karachi; Lesley Lokko, Head, Graduate School of Architecture, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg; Mohsen Mostafavi, Dean, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge; Dominique Perrault, Founder, Dominique Perrault Architecture, Paris; and Hossein Rezai, Director, Web Structures, Singapore.

The 2016 Steering Committee

The Award is governed by a Steering Committee chaired by His Highness the Aga Khan (please see the biographies of Steering Committee). The current members of the Steering Committee are:

His Highness the Aga Khan (Chairman); David Adjaye, founder and principal architect of Adjaye Associates, which has offices in London, New York and Accra; Mohammad al-Asad, the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Built Environment in Amman, Jordan; Francesco Bandarin, Assistant Director-General for Culture at UNESCO, Paris, France; Hanif Kara, a practicing structural engineer and Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University; Kamil Merican, founding partner of GDP Architects Malaysia; Azim Nanji, a social scientist who is Special Advisor to the Provost at the Aga Khan University and a Member of the Board of Directors of the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa; Professor Gülru Necipoglu, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art at Harvard University; Brigitte Shim, a principal in the Toronto-based design firm Shim-Sutcliffe Architects and Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto; and Yu Kongjian, founder and dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape and the Changjiang Chair Professor of Design, at Peking University. Farrokh Derakhshani is Director of the Award.

The Award Book

A monograph, which includes essays on issues raised by the Master Jury’s selections of the shortlist and the winners for the 2016 Award, will be published by Lars Müller Publishers in November 2016. The book, Architecture and Plurality, which was edited by Mohsen Mostafavi, includes descriptions and illustrations of the six winning projects. For more information, please see: https://www.lars-mueller-publishers.com/

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Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge, Tehran (Architect: Diba Tensile Architecture / Leila Araghian, Alireza Behzadi) Photograph © Aga Khan Trust for Culture / Barzin Baharlouie

Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka (Architect: Marina Tabassum). Photograph © Rajesh Vora

Hutong Children’s Library and Art Centre, Beijing (Architect: ZAO / standardarchitecture / Zhang Ke) Photograph © Su Shengliang, ZAO, standardarchitecture.

Issam Fares Institute, Beirut (Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects) Photograph Aga Khan Trust for Culture / Cemal Emden

Superkilen, Copenhagen (Architects: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, Topotek 1 and Superflex) Photograph © Aga Khan Trust for Culture/Kristian Skeie.

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More information

Marina Tabassum

Marina Tabassum (b. 1969, Dhaka, Bangladesh) is an acclaimed architect and educator who has received numerous international recognitions in the field of architecture. She graduated in 1995 from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Prior to founding Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA) in 2005, Tabassum was a founding partner of the Dhaka-based firm URBANA between 1995 and 2005 with Kashef Chowdhury. In 1997, URBANA won the national competition to design the Independence Monument of Bangladesh and the Museum of Independence under the Public Works Department and the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs. In her work, Tabassum seeks to establish a language of architecture that is contemporary yet reflectively rooted to place and prioritising climate, context, culture and history. Tabassum’s practice remains consciously contained in size, undertaking a limited number of projects per year.

Tabassum is a Professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She held the Norman Foster Chair at Yale University in 2023 and has taught as a visiting professor at numerous universities including the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, USA; the University of Toronto, Canada; and BRAC University, Bangladesh. She received an Honorary Doctorate from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and served as academic director at the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements between 2015 and 2021.

Tabassum’s pursuit for the ‘architecture of relevance’ has won her numerous awards including the Soane Medal from the United Kingdom; Arnold Brunner Memorial Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture; and the Jameel Prize from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016 for the Bait ur Rouf Mosque and has served as a member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture from 2017 to 2022 and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). In 2024, Tabassum was included in TIME Magazine’s ‘100 Most Influential People’.

Tabassum chairs the Executive Board of Prokritee, a fair-trade organisation that promotes crafts and provides livelihood to thousands of women artisans of Bangladesh. She is the founding chairperson of the Foundation for Architecture and Community Equity (F.A.C.E), a non-forprofit organisation that focuses on climate adaption and architecture’s agency and responsibility in providing dignified living conditions for marginalised populations. F.A.C.E is currently working with communities to build mobile modular housing (known as Khudi Bari) in various geographically and climatically challenged locations in Bangladesh.

Tabassum’s work is currently the subject of a travelling exhibition organised by Architektur Museum der TUM, Munich, showing in Lisbon and Delft. She has previously presented work at Whitechapel Gallery, London (with Rana Begum, 2019); Sharjah Architecture Triennale (2019); and Venice Architecture Biennale (2018). Her work has been published by ArchiTangle; Harvard Graduate School of Design; ORO Editions; and Lars Müller Publishers among others.

Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA). Founded in 2005, Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA) is an internationally recognised architecture and studio-based practice located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. MTA began its journey in the quest of establishing a language of architecture that is contemporary to the world yet rooted to a specific place. Standing against the global pressure of consumer architecture – a fast breed of buildings that are out of place and context – MTA is committed to rooting architecture to a place and is informed by climate and geography. Their work is well regarded as environmentally conscious, socially responsible and historically and culturally appropriate. Every project undertaken is a sensitive and relevant response to the uniqueness of individual sites, contexts, cultures and people.

With a focus on combining research and teaching, MTA invests in extensive research work on the impacts of climate change in Bangladesh working closely with geographers, landscape architects, planners and other allied professionals. Their focus of work also extends to the marginalised low to ultra-low income population of the country with a goal to elevate the environmental and living conditions of people.

Headed by principle architect Marina Tabassum, the studio engages talented architects and professionals with an interest in self-built projects, who are willing to push the boundaries of the conventional norms of practice. The associate architects who are responsible for research, design and management of individual projects work directly under the principal architect. The practice is consciously kept and retained in an optimum size and projects undertaken are carefully chosen and are limited by number per year.

MTA's process-based practice model is well regarded in the international scene of architecture as a Twenty First Century model. As such, MTA has presented works and research to numerous institutions across Bangladesh and internationally. In 2016, MTA received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the Bait Ur Rouf Mosque – a building distinguished by its lack of popular mosque iconography, an emphasis on space and light and its capacity to function not only as a place of worship but also as a refuge for a dense neighbourhood on Dhaka’s periphery. The project was also listed among the top 25 postwar buildings of the world by New York Times.

Published on: October 3, 2016

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