Zaha Hadid Architects and BIG among six winners of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture

Date
3 October 2016
Above

Zaha Hadid Architects: Issam Fares Institute, Beirut

Zaha Hadid Architects has been named as one of the recipients of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture this year alongside five other international architecture practices. The awards, given once every three years, are bestowed upon practices for projects that “identify and encourage building concepts that successfully addressed the needs and aspirations of communities in which Muslims have a significant presence.”

This year’s awarded buildings and spaces span a vast array of typologies including a pedestrian bridge, a mosque, a university building and a public park. The winning projects are:

- Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka by Marina Tabassum


- Friendship Centre, Gaibandha by Kashef Chowdhury and Urbana

- Hutong Children’s Library and Art Centre, Beijing by ZAO, standardarchitecture and Zhang Ke

- Superkilen, Copenhagen by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, Topotek 1 and Superflex
- Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge, Tehran by Diba Tensile Architecture, Leila Araghian and Alireza Behzadi


- Issam Fares Institute, Beirut by Zaha Hadid Architects

The jury stated: “The six award recipients, arrived at after long and sometimes heated discussion, accurately reflect the wide range of entries: a pedestrian bridge that privileges use over form; a sacred space that plays inventively with tradition; a project that is at once landscape and building; a bold, contemporary insertion into a traditional setting; a diminutive library operating at a much larger micro-urban scale, and an urban park that provides new forms of public space. In such a context, a universal language of architecture no longer seems appropriate: what remains are creative and often modest site-specific responses that generate new vocabularies of their own.“

Now in its 39th year the awards have been presented to a number of high profile architects including Norman Foster, Charles Correa, Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel and Hassan Fathy.

Above

BIG: Superkillen, Copenhagen

Above

Marina Tabassum

: Bait Ur Rouf Mosque, Dhaka

Above

Kashef Chowdhury and Urbana
: Friendship Centre, Gaibandha

Above

Diba Tensile Architecture, Leila Araghian and Alireza Behzadi: Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge, Tehran

Above

ZAO, standardarchitecture and Zhang Ke: Hutong Children’s Library and Art Centre, Beijing

Share Article

Further Info

About the Author

Owen Pritchard

Owen joined It’s Nice That as Editor in November of 2015 leading and overseeing all editorial content across online, print and the events programme, before leaving in early 2018.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.