Aserene airport, a contemporary art museum and a series of refugee community centers are among the winners of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, a major prize honoring new buildings in "communities in which Muslims have a significant presence."
The designers behind the six winning projects, which were unveiled Thursday, will share a $1 million prize pot that is among the profession's largest.
....
Two of this year's six winners are located in Bangladesh. One, a landscaping project in the western city of Jhenaidah, saw a riverside dump site revamped with brick-lined walkways and public ghats. The other comprises a series of six temporary community spaces for refugees in Cox's Bazar, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims fled to following Myanmar's brutal military crackdown against them. Both projects were commended by the judges for addressing women's needs.
....
The nine members of the independent Master Jury who selected the 20 shortlisted projects are: Nada Al Hassan, an architect specialising in the conservation of architectural and urban heritage; Amale Andraos, Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Kader Attia, an artist who explores the wide-ranging effects of western cultural hegemony and colonialism; Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, director-general of Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements, in Dhaka, Bangladesh; Sibel Bozdoğan, a Visiting Professor of Modern Architecture and Urbanism at the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Boston University; Lina Ghotmeh, a French-Lebanese architect who leads a practice where every project learns from a vernacular past to build a new “déjà-là”; Francis Kéré, an AKAA laureate and internationally renowned Burkinabè architect who received the Award in 2004 for his first project, an elementary school in Gando, Burkina Faso; Anne Lacaton, founder of Lacaton & Vassal in Bordeaux in 1989, who focuses on the generosity of space and economy of means; Nader Tehrani, founding principal of NADAAA, a practice dedicated to design innovation, collaboration and a dialogue with the construction industry.
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture is governed by a Steering Committee chaired by His Highness the Aga Khan. The other members of the Steering Committee are Sheikha Mai Bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, President, Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa Center for Culture and Research, Manama; Emre Arolat, Founder, EAA - Emre Arolat Architecture, Istanbul; Meisa Batayneh, Principal Architect, Founder, maisam architects and engineers, Amman; Sir David Chipperfield, Principal, David Chipperfield Architects, London; Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Director, Institute of African Studies, Columbia University, New York; Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Marina Tabassum, Principal, Marina Tabassum Architects, Dhaka; and Sarah M. Whiting, Dean, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge. Farrokh Derakhshani is the Director of the Award. 1