Inclusive Architecture

Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2022 – Inclusive Architecture

The release of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture every three years is an enormously important moment for the architecture world. The projects recognized by this Award represent the vanguard of thinking and practice in architecture that goes beyond the regular scope of building, planning and preservation through its strong impact on the needs and aspirations of societies. This publication presents the twenty shortlisted projects, including the six recipients of the 2020–22 cycle of the Award.

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture’s mandate is different from that of many other architecture prizes: it not only rewards architects but also identifies municipalities, builders, clients, artisans and engineers who have played essential roles in the realization of a project. This publication thus presents the projects from various viewpoints alongside detailed and up-to-date images and descriptions.

The acclaimed, interdisciplinary master jury and steering committee of this cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture that determines the projects presented include David Chipperfield, Francis Kéré, Anna Lacaton, Marina Tabassum, and Sarah M. Whiting, to name but a few. Scholarly essays across various disciplines from members of the master jury and steering committee round out the publication. Contributions include a text on the optimism of humanity by Souleymane Bachir Diagne, director of the Institute of African Studies, Columbia University, and a contextualization of Modern Architecture in the Muslim World by Sibel Bozdoğan of Boston University. Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, director-general of the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, writes on the perspective of the dialogical, while Nasser Rabbat, the Aga Khan Professor at MIT, shares notes on architecture as a humanist empire. The texts also include a Salon des Refusés by Nader Teherani, founding principal of Boston-based architecture firm NADAAA.

The texts, which come from a wide range of geographies, are informative and descriptive, often striking an emotional note. Together with the project presentations, the publication thereby guides the reader through a contemplation of an architectural question of increasing urgency in our current times of crisis: how to build ethically for our shared global future.

With contributions by Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, Sibel Bozdoğan, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Farrokh Derakhshani, Nasser Rabbat, Nader Teherani, and Sarah M. Whiting.

Sarah M. Whiting has been the Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design since 2019. She served as the Dean of Rice University's School of Architecture from 2010 to 2019.  She is also a design principal and co-founder of WW Architecture. Professor Whiting received a Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture, urban history, and theory from Yale University, a Master of Architecture from Princeton University in 1990, and a Doctor of Philosophy in the History and Theory of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001.  Professor Whiting worked with the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and with Peter Eisenman in New York. She has taught design, history, theory, and criticism at additional institutions, including Princeton University, the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Florida. She frequently lectures throughout the US and abroad, and regularly serves as a critic of architecture and urban design.
Professor Whiting’s research is broadly interdisciplinary, with the built environment at its core. An expert in architectural theory and urbanism, she has particular interests in modern and contemporary architecture’s relationship with politics, economics, and society, and how the built environment shapes the nature of public life.  Her work has been published in leading journals and collections.  She is also the founding editor of Point, a book series aimed at shaping contemporary discussions in architecture and urbanism.
Professor Whiting’s writings have been published in journals ranging from ANY to Wired, as well as in collections including Shaping the City, Mies in America, Six Authors in Search of an Architect, and An Architecture for all Senses: The Work of Eileen Gray. She edited Differences, a collection of essays by Ignasi de Solà-Morales, and served as reviews editor for the journal Assemblage from 1996 to 2001. She currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals LOG, The Plan, and Thresholds.