Last Updated on: 1 September 2007
2007 - 10th Award Cycle - The 2007 Aga Khan Award master jury recognises how architecture and the built environment define the diverse and divergent paths that lead to the capacious lifeworlds of contemporary Muslim societies. Our challenge was to judge the complex negotiation that architecture represents between, on the one hand, the sense of satisfaction and belonging that a building – a home – provides and, on the other, worldly ambitions and affiliations that are unconstrained by the retain ing wall, village boundary or national frontier. Of 343 nominations, we shortlisted 27 projects for on-site review, and from these selected nine projects for recognition. Rather than grouping these projects under a common theme, or attempting to weigh them against a strict measure of quality, we proposed a set of ‘curatorial principles’ to inform and guide us. We saw ourselves as curators who, by placing these diverse projects next to one another, hoped to convey a sense of their specific attributes, their locality, while also giving them a collective meaning. Here are some of the curatorial principles with which we attempted to transform the expectations associated with the award.