Rebuilding cultures through art, design, and community

In the spring of 2016, MIT Associate Professor Azra Akšamija, created an art installation which consisted of 20,000 small green plexiglass squares, with intricate holes cut in each one, depicting vanished or endangered pieces of global cultural heritage, including buildings, monuments, and sculptures Attached to fencing about 40 feet high, the squares collectively formed an image of the Arch of Triumph from Palmyra, Syria, an ancient treasure destroyed. In 2013, Ms Akšamija was given the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for her design of a prayer space’s symbolic elements, at Austria’s first-ever Muslim cemetery, in Altach.