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Trustees of God's creation build a better world-2001-11-13

Date: 
Tuesday, 2001, November 13
Location: 

The Times (UK)

Source: 
The times

THE 2001 Aga Khan Award for Architecture places a new emphasis on rural projects in the developing world. The triennial award is the best-funded in the architectural world with a prize fund of $500,000.

The most striking of the nine awards goes to the Barefoot Architects of Tilonia, a rural community in Rajasthan, India, who designed and built a college campus of verandahed buildings of local rubble stone, and provided more than 200 low-cost dwellings in nearby villages. The Barefoot Architects, who are local people with no formal training, have built selfbuttressing geodosic (golf-ball) domes from scrap metal taken from old bullock carts and pumps, which can carry a greater weight of thatch than traditional narrow span structures, reducing the frequency of rethatching. The domes can be used, like tents, as emergency housing.

Underground rainwater storage tanks provide a year- round supply and enable wasteland reclamation. The community was founded by Bunker Roy who wanted to respect local skills and help people to help themselves.

An award also goes to the village of Ait Iktel in Morocco's High Atlas Mountains which now has electricity and street lighting and a water supply feeding traditional street fountains as well as a new school providing classes in Arabic, Berber and French. Liberated from the heavy labour of carrying water, girls and women have time to attend school and work in the weaving workshops. p>Another winner is an orphange at Aqaba, Jordan's outlet to the Red Sea, designed by Jafar Tukan to house groups of nine children (72 in total) with surrogate mothers, providing them with meals and tutoring. The little village, complete with shady courts and trees, has revived the use of natural stone from the nearby mountains.

A further prize goes to a public-private initiative in Iran which has funded the adaptation of traditional settlements in 21 cities and towns to imaginative new uses. These mostly consist of decaying or abandoned one and two-storey mud and fired brick structures laid out around courtyards which are acquired, restored and sold or rented to new owners or tenants. In the centre of Isfahan the Vazir Bathhouse, dating from the Safavid period, has been transformed into a library while the pool chambers serve for art classes.

In Malaysia, the Datai Hotel at Pulau Langkawi, by the Australian architect Kerry Hill, receives an award for an eco-sensitive approach, setting the hotel away from the beach in a series of pavilions sited to minimise impact on the forest. Where necessary, trained elephants were used to remove trees rather than mechanical equipment since they cause less damage.

Other awards go to a poultry-farming school in Guinea, the Nubian Museum at Aswan in Egypt, the Olbia Social Centre in Antalya, Turkey, and a new park, Bagh-e-Ferdowsi, beneath the Alborz Mountains to the north of Tehran.

The chairman's award, made by the Aga Khan himself, for a lifelong contribution goes to Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka's most prolific and influential architect, who took a pioneering interest in the rescue of historic buildings and went on to design the country's Parliament, islanded on a vast lake, and Ruhunu University near Matara, an attractive matrix of pavilions and courtyards overlooking the Southern Ocean.

His most recent projects, before he was disabled by a stroke, include the Kandalama Hotel, an austere jungle palace, a lighthouse at Galle on a boulder-strewn headland, and a pleasure pavilion in a coconut grove on the edge of Colombo, each reflecting his concern to "consult the genius of the place in all".

The Aga Khan has urged the need "to encourage people to recognise the value of open space" in the face of fast- growing populations, adding: "We have lost some of the competencies in landscape architecture which were intrinsic to the Islamic world." He also commented: "There are many, many interpretations of Islam within the wider Islamic community, but I think the one on which there is greatest consensus is the fact that we are trustees of God's creation, and we are instructed to seek to leave the world a better place than it was when we came into it."

The awards were announ-ced on November 6 in the Citadel of Aleppo in Syria, and were selected from 427 projects.


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