Aga Khan Trust for Culture

<div class="pc-title">His Highness the Aga Khan</div>

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 His Highness the Aga Khan, the founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, is the 49th hereditary Imam (Spiritual Leader) of the Shia Ismaili Muslims. In Islam&rsquo;s ethical tradition, religious leaders not only interpret the faith but also have a responsibility to help improve the quality of life in their community and in the societies amongst which they live. For His Highness the Aga Khan, this has meant a deep engagement with development for over 60 years through the agencies of the AKDN.
 His Highness the Aga Khan established the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and became Chairman of its Steering Committee in 1977. Subsequently, he founded the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard and MIT (1979) and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (1988), which now includes the Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme, Aga Khan Music Programme, Aga Khan Museum and the Education Programme. &nbsp;Other AKDN agencies are also active in the field of the built and natural environment, such as the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat, which works to mitigate the threat posed by natural disasters and climate change.
 The Aga Khan&rsquo;s interest and patronage in architecture has been recognized by numerous professional institutions who have bestowed upon him their highest honours and medals, including the American Institute of Architects, USA (1984), the Royal Institute of British Architects (1991), International Union of Architects (2001), the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (2013) and the Architectural League of New York (2017).&nbsp; He has also been honoured for his work in preserving cultural heritage, including the Hadrian Award from the World Monuments Fund (1996), the Vincent Scully Prize from the National Building Museum&nbsp; (2005) and the Urban Land Institute&rsquo;s J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development (2011).&nbsp; In addition, he has received honorary citizenships from cities as varied as Granada, Samarkand and Timbuktu, as well as many other awards, decorations and honorary degrees.
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His Highness the Aga Khan, the founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network, is the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.

HIS HIGHNESS THE AGA KHAN

Mohammad al-Asad is a Jordanian architect and architectural historian. He is the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Built Environment in Amman. Dr. al-Asad studied architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and history of architecture at Harvard University, before taking post-doctoral research positions at Harvard and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

He has taught at the University of Jordan, Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was Alan K. and Leonarda Laing Distinguished Visiting Professor. He was also an adjunct professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Dr. al-Asad has published in both Arabic and English on the architecture of the Islamic world, in books and academic and professional journals. He is the author of&nbsp;Old Houses of Jordan: Amman 1920-1950&nbsp;(1997) and&nbsp;Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism in the Middle East&nbsp;(2012); and co-author, with Ghazi Bisheh and Fawzi Zayadine, of&nbsp;The Umayyads: The Rise of Islamic Art&nbsp;(2000) and, with Sahel Al Hiyari and &Aacute;lvaro Siza, of&nbsp;Sahel Al Hiyari Projects&nbsp;(2005). He has also edited the proceedings of three Aga Khan Award for Architecture seminars:&nbsp;Shaping Cities: Emerging Models of Planning Practices&nbsp;(2016),&nbsp;Workplaces: The Transformation of Places of Production: Industrialization and the Built Environment in the Islamic World&nbsp;(2010) and (co-edited with Majd Musa)&nbsp;Architectural Journalism and Criticism: Global Perspectives&nbsp;(2007).

Dr. al-Asad has been a member of the board of directors of the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, part of the Royal Society for Fine Arts. He served as a project reviewer for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture during the 1989, 1995, 1998, 2004 and 2007 Award cycles, and was a member of the Steering Committee in 2010, 2013 and 2016.

Mohammad al-Asad is a Jordanian architect and architectural historian. 

Mohammad al-Asad

Homi K. Bhabha is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English, Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, and Senior Advisor on the Humanities to the President and Provost at Harvard University. Professor Bhabha was born in India and educated at the University of Bombay and then at the University of Oxford. He is considered one of the most prominent and influential figures in the fields of postcolonial studies and cultural theory and his scholarly interests include cultural migration, globalization and human rights.&nbsp;Professor Bhabha has written extensively about race, gender, culture, and the arts; his works include&nbsp;Nation and Narration&nbsp;and&nbsp;The Location of Culture. Professor Bhabha has served as an advisor at key art institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Rockefeller Foundation. He is a member of the Asian Art Council at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and an advisor on the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives project at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Professor Bhabha also serves on the advisory board of the Indo-US Commission on Museums; is a member and former Chair of the World Economic Forum&rsquo;s Global Agenda Council on Human Rights; and a Trustee of the UNESCO World Report on Cultural Diversity. He was a member of the 2007 Aga Khan Award for Architecture Master Jury and has served on the Award Steering Committee since 2008.&nbsp;

Homi K. Bhabha is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English, Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center

 Homi K. Bhabha

Norman Foster was born in Manchester in 1935. After graduating from Manchester University School of Architecture and City Planning in 1961 he won a Henry Fellowship to Yale University, where he gained a master&rsquo;s degree in Architecture. Lord Foster is the founder and chairman of Foster + Partners.Founded in London in 1967, it is now a worldwide practice, with project offices in more than twenty countries. Over the past four decades the company has been responsible for a strikingly wide range of work, from urban masterplans, public infrastructure, airports, civic and cultural buildings, offices and workplaces to private houses and product design. Since its inception, the practice has received more than 600 awards and citations for excellence and has won more than 100 international and national competitions. Recent work includes Beijing Airport, Millau Viaduct in France, the Swiss Re tower and the Great Court at the British Museum in London and the Hearst Headquarters tower in New York. Lord Foster received a 2007 Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the University of Technology Petronas campus in Bandar Seri Iskandar, Malaysia. Lord Foster became the 21st Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate in 1999 and was awarded the Praemium Imperiale Award for Architecture in 2002. He has been awarded the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Architecture (1994), the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture (1983), and the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture (1991). In 1990 he was granted a Knighthood in the Queen&rsquo;s Birthday Honours, and in 1999 was honoured with a Life Peerage, becoming Lord Foster of Thames Bank. Lord Foster has been a member of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture Steering Committee since 2008.

Norman Foster was born in Manchester in 1935. 

Norman Foster

Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj is a Syrian architect and Chief Executive Officer of The Syria Trust for Development, a non-governmental organisation active in the fields of rural development, education, culture and heritage.&nbsp;From 2004 to 2009, Mr. Hallaj was team leader of the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) projects in Yemen, first for the Shibam Urban Development Project, and subsequently for the Project for the Development of Historic Cities in Yemen, which provided technical support to the Yemeni authorities to manage and develop Shibam and Zabid and several other historic cities in the country. He was a recipient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2007 for the Rehabilitation of the City of Shibam. Mr. Hallaj attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in Architecture. He returned to Syria and joined the architectural practice F.H. Jaberi Architects, and then became a partner in the firm Suradec (Sustainable Urban Rehabilitation, Architectural Design, and Engineering Consortium). He also served as chair of the technical committee responsible for the preservation of the Old City of Aleppo, supervising implementation of rehabilitation measures and coordinating integrated interventions for the preservation of the city&rsquo;s historic neighbourhoods. Mr. Hallaj&rsquo;s research interests include the development of architecture and urban theory in the context of historic and contemporary Muslim societies, particularly community-oriented planning and urban management. Mr. Hallaj served as an on-site project reviewer for the 1998, 2001 and 2004 cycles of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and was Chair of the 2010 Award Master Jury.

Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj is a Syrian architect and Chief Executive Officer of The Syria Trust for Development

 Omar Abdulaziz Hallaj

Glenn Lowry is an art historian from the United States and Director of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Among the major exhibitions that have taken place during Mr. Lowry's tenure at MoMA are&nbsp;Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years&nbsp;(2007),&nbsp;Manet and the Execution of Maximilian&nbsp;(2007),&nbsp;Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul&nbsp;(2006),&nbsp;Pioneering Modern Painting: C&eacute;zanne and Pissarro 1865-1885&nbsp;(2005),&nbsp;Matisse Picasso&nbsp;(2003),&nbsp;Mies in Berlin&nbsp;(2001), and&nbsp;Jackson Pollock&nbsp;(1998-1999).&nbsp;A noted scholar of Islamic arts and architecture, Mr. Lowry was previously Director of the Art Gallery of Ontario (1990-1995) and Curator of Near Eastern Art at the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art (1984-1990) where he organised, among other exhibitions,&nbsp;Timur and Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century&nbsp;(1989) and&nbsp;A Jeweler's Eye: Islamic Arts of the Book from the Vever Collection&nbsp;(1988). Mr. Lowry's many honours include honorary doctorates from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (2000) and The College of William and Mary (2009),&nbsp;Chevalier de l&rsquo;Ordre National du M&eacute;rite&nbsp;(1994) and&nbsp;Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres&nbsp;(2001) from the French government, and the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Studies Award (1990). Mr. Lowry is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and American Philosophical Society.

Glenn Lowry is an art historian from the United States and Director of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.

 Glenn Lowry

Rahul Mehrotra is a practising architect and educator. He works in Mumbai and teaches at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, where he is Professor of Urban Design and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design. His built works include the LMW Corporate Office in Coimbatore, the Hewlett Packard Campus in Bangalore, a Rural Campus for the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Tulzapur, an extension to the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai and the restoration of the Chowmahalla Palace in Hyderabad.&nbsp;Professor Mehrotra is currently working on a hospice in Chennai, a corporate office building in Hyderabad, a social housing project for elephants and mahouts in Amber and a laboratory building in Basel. Professor Mehrotra has written extensively on Architecture and Urbanism in India and his most recent book is&nbsp;Architecture in India since 1990&nbsp;(Pictor, 2011). As Trustee of the Urban Design Research Institute, and Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research (both based in Mumbai), Professor Mehrotra continues to be engaged as an activist in the civic and urban affairs of the city. He serves on the boards of the London School of Economics Cities, and the Indian Institute of Human Settlements, and is a member of the Global Jury of the 3rd Holcim Awards Competition (2012). He was a member of the 2004 Aga Khan Award Master Jury and has served on the Award Steering Committee since 2008.

Rahul Mehrotra is a practising architect and educator. 

 Rahul Mehrotra

An architect and educator, Mohsen Mostafavi is Dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. He was formerly the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University, prior to which he served as the Chairman of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.&nbsp;He has taught at numerous institutions including the University of Pennsylvania, University of Cambridge and the Frankfurt Academy of Fine Arts (St&auml;delschule). Mostafavi served on the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture from 2001 to 2013, and has served on the design committees of the London Development Agency (LDA) and the RIBA Gold Medal. He is a consultant on a number of international architectural and urban design projects, including a recent collaboration on the major technology park Skolkovo Innovation Center in Skolkovo, Russia; the Greenway Campus Project at Amherst College; and campus design at Weifang University. He was co-curator of the 5th China International Architectural Biennial 2013 in Beijing and the 2015 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season Main Exhibition Pavilion. His recent publications include&nbsp;Ecological Urbanism&nbsp;(co-edited 2010 and recently translated into Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish);&nbsp;Implicate &amp; Explicate&nbsp;(2011);&nbsp;Louis Vuitton: Architecture and Interiors&nbsp;(2011);&nbsp;In the Life of Cities&nbsp;(2012);&nbsp;Instigations: Engaging Architecture, Landscape, and the City&nbsp;(2012);&nbsp;Architecture Is Life&nbsp;(2013);&nbsp;Nicholas Hawksmoor: The London Churches&nbsp;(2015); and&nbsp;Ethics of the Urban: The City and the Spaces of the Political&nbsp;(forthcoming).

An architect and educator, Mohsen Mostafavi is Dean of the Harvard University Graduate School

 Mohsen Mostafavi

Farshid Moussavi is an architect and educator, and principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA). She studied at University College London and the Harvard Graduate School of Design before co-founding Foreign Office Architects (FOA) in London. FMA is working on a range of international projects including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, USA; a residential complex in the La D&eacute;fense financial district in Paris, France; and the Quran Museum in Tehran.&nbsp;At FOA, she co-authored many award-winning projects internationally such as the Yokohama International Port Terminal and the firm&rsquo;s work was widely published and exhibited, most notably as a solo show representing the British Pavilion at the 8th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2002. FOA&rsquo;s many awards included the Enric Miralles Prize for Architecture, six RIBA Awards, the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale Award and the Charles Jencks Award for Architecture. Since 2006, Farshid Moussavi has been Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She has also taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, the Architectural Association in London, the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, the Hoger Architectuure Instituut in Gent, and in the USA at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Princeton University School of Architecture, as well as at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. Farshid Moussavi is the author of&nbsp;The Function of Ornament&nbsp;(2006) and&nbsp;the Function of Form&nbsp;(2009), based on her research and teaching at Harvard. Both books have been translated into several languages. She has recently become a regular columnist for the Architectural Review magazine. Professor Moussavi is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Whitechapel Gallery as well as The Architecture Foundation in London. She is an External Examiner at the Royal College of Art in London and is on the Education Board of the Strelka Institute for Architecture, Media and Design in Moscow. She has previously been a member of the Advisory Group to the British Council, the Mayor of London&rsquo;s&nbsp;Design for London&nbsp;advisory group, the International Design Committee for the London Development Agency (LDA) and the RIBA President&rsquo;s Medals. She has served on the jury for the RIBA Gold Medal and the Stirling Prize for Architecture. In 2004, she was Chair of the Aga Khan Award Master Jury and has been a member of the Award Steering Committee since 2005.&nbsp;

Farshid Moussavi is an architect and educator, and principal of Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA). 

Farshid Moussavi

Han T&uuml;mertekin is a practicing architect based in Istanbul and principal of Mimarlar Tasarim Danismanlik Ltd., a firm he established in 1986. He previously worked as an architect in Paris. His work includes residential, commercial and institutional projects primarily in Turkey, as well as in the Netherlands, Japan, United Kingdom, France, China, Mongolia and Kenya. Mr. T&uuml;mertekin was trained in architecture at Istanbul Technical University and completed graduate studies in historic preservation at the University of Istanbul.&nbsp;In addition to his built work, he has been teaching architecture since 1992 at universities including Harvard University&rsquo;s Graduate School of Design; Istanbul Technical University; Ecole Polytechnique F&eacute;d&eacute;rale de Lausanne; Ecole Speciale d'Architecture,Paris; Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul; Uludag University, Bursa; and the Ecole d'Architecture in Strasbourg. He is one of the founders of the graduate programme in architecture at Bilgi University, Istanbul. Mr. T&uuml;mertekin&rsquo;s works have been widely published in international architectural journals, including&nbsp;Domus,&nbsp;Abitare,&nbsp;AV, Oris, Architectural Review, L&rsquo;architecture d&rsquo;Aujourd&rsquo;hui,&nbsp;the&nbsp;World Atlas of Contemporary Architecture, and the&nbsp;Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture. A monograph of his work was published by Harvard University Press in 2006. Mr. T&uuml;mertekin has received several architectural prizes, including an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004 for the B2 House in Ayvacık, Turkey. He served on the 2007 Master Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and has been a member of the Award Steering Committee since 2008.

Han Tümertekin is a practicing architect based in Istanbul and principal of Mimarlar Tasarim Danismanlik Ltd., a firm he established in 1986. 

 Han Tümertekin

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