Imam and builder
Review by Joan Conway
Published: December 15 2007 00:29 | Last updated: December 15 2007 00:29
Under The Eaves of Architecture. The Aga Khan: Builder and Patron
By Philip Jodidio
Prestel, £38
FT Bookshop price £30
Under The Eaves of Architecture celebrates The Aga Khan’s 50 years as the spiritual guide to the world’s 15m Ismaili muslims and explores how his religious role has contributed to his work as a leading patron of architecture and building preservation.
He has commissioned structures from North America to south-east Asia and set up the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, which seeks to re-establish Islamic culture and recognise projects incorporating distinctive design, restoration, community development and sustainability.
The book features universities, restoration programmes, housing schemes in Bangladesh, the Kaedi Regional Hospital in Mauritania and the Institute de Monde Arabe in Paris, a building of unique design that acts as an intermediary between the Middle East and the west.
However, of particular note is the Hajj airport terminal in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which sees a million pilgrims annually trek to Mecca. It is inspired by tents but is also contemporary. The very lightness of the construction, as well as its vast size, sets it apart.
While supported by beautiful pictures, the text in this book gives the impression an academic paper. Sharper editing would not have gone amiss.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
The Aga Khan: Builder and Patron
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_pape ... ?id=232191
Saturday, January 12, 2008
The Aga Khan builds a better world
Kelvin Browne, National Post
Published: Saturday, January 12, 2008
UNDER THE EAVES OF ARCHITECTURE
THE AGA KHAN: BUILDER AND PATRON
By Philip Jodidio
Prestel 206 pp., $97
"This book is not about architecture," says Philip Jodidio, author of Under the Eaves of Architecture, the Aga Khan: Builder and Patron. He explains that, "It's about a man and his commitment to bettering the life of many through improvements to the physical environment."
The man is Prince Karim Aga Khan. He's the 49th hereditary iman, or spiritual leader, of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. He succeeded his grandfather in this role in 1957 at the age of 20. Approximately 15 million Ismailis live in more than 25 countries, including Canada and the United States.
Among other things, the book documents the winners of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture that began in 1977, illustrates the successes of the Aga Khan Historic Cities Program, and describes four fascinating new projects in Canada. These include the delegation of the Ismaili Imamat in Ottawa, the Ismaili Centre and Jamatkhana, the Aga Khan Museum, and the gardens that unite these two projects on a single site in Toronto. What's unexpected is not the architecture the book showcases, which is mostly excellent, but the philosophy of the Aga Khan that maintains good architecture is a foundation for a better life.
This belief is beyond a narrow sense of architecture contributing to a spiritual life via religious buildings as you might as sume the Aga Khan's focus might be. In an interview in the book from March, 2007, His Highness says, "In much of Islamic architecture you find a sense of spirituality. You find that spirituality not only in religious building. If you think of the history of landscape architecture and you relate that to references to heaven in the Koran, you find very strong statements about the value of the environment, the responses to the senses, to scent, to noise, music or water. You do not treat these spaces as theological spaces, you treat them as spaces that aim to give you a sense of spiritual happiness."
The environment, built and natural, is intrinsic to our quality of life. This isn't just rhetoric or someone getting on a trendy bandwagon. The Aga Khan was a pioneer environmentalist. One of his first projects in the early 1960s was on the beautiful but largely undeveloped Costa Smeralda. He gave himself the dual mandate of raising the standard of living of people there and, at the same time, protecting the remarkable landscape. Only recently have other developers tried to do both.
The Aga Khan says that when he first assumed his role and began to travel the world, he came into contact with poverty that was indescribable. Because of this, it's understandable his interest in architecture was initially driven by how it could help improve the quality of life of the really poor. Ahead of his time again, he then realizes that, "Whereas in the consumer societies of the West you can build and then pull things down, in these ultra-poor societies you cannot afford to do that. What you have to do is to modify buildings or adjust them; therefore, the flexibility of the plan that you put into place has to be conceived with a different view of time than it would be in other parts of the world."
He goes on to explain the difficulties of a western conception of architecture in poor countries and how important it is not impose this approach in terms of what is needed from a programmatic perspective or how a building should look. With the overwhelming influence of the modern (and western) approach to building in the 1960s and '70s, literally using the local vernacular or the lessons it could give vis-a-vis sustainability seldom happened. While it seems obvious now, this insight was truly enlightened 40 years ago.
When Mr. Jodidio asks why the Aga Khan created an award for architecture, the notion of sustainability is implicit in his response. "One of the factors leading to the award was what I would call the deconstruction of the cultural inheritance … We worried about the loss of cultural continuity in the physical environment … there was no serious analysis of traditions and how they came into place, or how they could be revived and used in modern buildings."
At the conclusion of the interview, the Aga Khan reiterates his holistic notion of the place of architecture in life. He says, "You cannot conceive of quality of life change without integrating the physical environment. Everyday you live under a roof."
Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
The Aga Khan builds a better world
Kelvin Browne, National Post
Published: Saturday, January 12, 2008
UNDER THE EAVES OF ARCHITECTURE
THE AGA KHAN: BUILDER AND PATRON
By Philip Jodidio
Prestel 206 pp., $97
"This book is not about architecture," says Philip Jodidio, author of Under the Eaves of Architecture, the Aga Khan: Builder and Patron. He explains that, "It's about a man and his commitment to bettering the life of many through improvements to the physical environment."
The man is Prince Karim Aga Khan. He's the 49th hereditary iman, or spiritual leader, of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. He succeeded his grandfather in this role in 1957 at the age of 20. Approximately 15 million Ismailis live in more than 25 countries, including Canada and the United States.
Among other things, the book documents the winners of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture that began in 1977, illustrates the successes of the Aga Khan Historic Cities Program, and describes four fascinating new projects in Canada. These include the delegation of the Ismaili Imamat in Ottawa, the Ismaili Centre and Jamatkhana, the Aga Khan Museum, and the gardens that unite these two projects on a single site in Toronto. What's unexpected is not the architecture the book showcases, which is mostly excellent, but the philosophy of the Aga Khan that maintains good architecture is a foundation for a better life.
This belief is beyond a narrow sense of architecture contributing to a spiritual life via religious buildings as you might as sume the Aga Khan's focus might be. In an interview in the book from March, 2007, His Highness says, "In much of Islamic architecture you find a sense of spirituality. You find that spirituality not only in religious building. If you think of the history of landscape architecture and you relate that to references to heaven in the Koran, you find very strong statements about the value of the environment, the responses to the senses, to scent, to noise, music or water. You do not treat these spaces as theological spaces, you treat them as spaces that aim to give you a sense of spiritual happiness."
The environment, built and natural, is intrinsic to our quality of life. This isn't just rhetoric or someone getting on a trendy bandwagon. The Aga Khan was a pioneer environmentalist. One of his first projects in the early 1960s was on the beautiful but largely undeveloped Costa Smeralda. He gave himself the dual mandate of raising the standard of living of people there and, at the same time, protecting the remarkable landscape. Only recently have other developers tried to do both.
The Aga Khan says that when he first assumed his role and began to travel the world, he came into contact with poverty that was indescribable. Because of this, it's understandable his interest in architecture was initially driven by how it could help improve the quality of life of the really poor. Ahead of his time again, he then realizes that, "Whereas in the consumer societies of the West you can build and then pull things down, in these ultra-poor societies you cannot afford to do that. What you have to do is to modify buildings or adjust them; therefore, the flexibility of the plan that you put into place has to be conceived with a different view of time than it would be in other parts of the world."
He goes on to explain the difficulties of a western conception of architecture in poor countries and how important it is not impose this approach in terms of what is needed from a programmatic perspective or how a building should look. With the overwhelming influence of the modern (and western) approach to building in the 1960s and '70s, literally using the local vernacular or the lessons it could give vis-a-vis sustainability seldom happened. While it seems obvious now, this insight was truly enlightened 40 years ago.
When Mr. Jodidio asks why the Aga Khan created an award for architecture, the notion of sustainability is implicit in his response. "One of the factors leading to the award was what I would call the deconstruction of the cultural inheritance … We worried about the loss of cultural continuity in the physical environment … there was no serious analysis of traditions and how they came into place, or how they could be revived and used in modern buildings."
At the conclusion of the interview, the Aga Khan reiterates his holistic notion of the place of architecture in life. He says, "You cannot conceive of quality of life change without integrating the physical environment. Everyday you live under a roof."
Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.