Aga Khan Awards 2004.

The triennial Aga Khan Awards for Architecture have become important ingredients of international architectural discussion. Offered for work in Islamic countries, or for Muslims in other parts of the world, the awards celebrate a wide spectrum of architecture, from work for the very poor to houses for the prosperous, from desert buildings to ones in the jungle, from small restorations to big commercial buildings. The awards are unique as they are given following expert on-site assessments of buildings that have been in use for at least a year. A distinguished independent international jury* reviews all work submitted and decides which projects should be assessed. In this, the Ninth cycle, 378 projects from 44 countries were nominated, out of which seven were judged worthy of an award.

The Steering Committee of the awards, chaired by the Aga, suggested some 'threshold criteria' for projects to be included in the final choice. These were 'contributing to established ways of doing things or extending boundaries in the field, making intelligent use of available resources and material and responding sensitively to the environment, and showing social and ethical responsibility with respect to individual and community self-determination'. Important factors to be considered were 'the symbolization of power and authority; the articulation of public and private spaces; issues of cultural identity and cultural representation; sensitivity to plurality; and constructive aspirations for individuals and societies'.

The jury was also asked to look out for projects that address the growing housing crises in most Muslim countries. Two award-winning projects in this year's cycle clearly respond to the request: the sandbag emergency shelters (p72) and the revitalization programme for the old city of Jerusalem (p76). The emergency shelters for the dispossessed are taken very much on trust: the proposal is ingenious and environmentally apt, but there is evidence that the houses have not found favour with users. More experiments are needed. The Jerusalem revitalization work has already shown its worth. Its award celebrates imagination, ingenuity, social commitment and political nous with a programme that helps knit past and future, public and private in ways that can continue to be developed.

The suggestion that symbolization of power should be explored accounts for the presence of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (opposite) and the Petronas Towers (p74) in the list of award winners. But whereas the outstanding library (a symbol of knowledge) would undoubtedly have been an award winner judged by any criteria, the presence of Petronas Towers is more puzzling. Doubtless it celebrates the power of money (and perhaps that of nationhood) but, though well made and for a while the tallest building in the world, it is scarcely remarkable, and its Islamic credentials seem a bit thin in practice (though its lavatories do face away from Mecca).

In complete contrast is the restoration of the Al-Abbas Mosque at Asnaf (p70). An ancient jewel on a dusty Yemeni hillside has been lovingly repolished and returned to its place in the centre of the community clearly 'contributing to established ways of doing things'. The other small building, the B2 house, Turkey (p69), is more difficult to place. It is well built with local materials and it exploits its splendid site to the full. But it is formally ungainly, and does not seem to be better than several holiday houses in the same country (some of which have already received Aga awards).

In its way, the school at Gando in Burkina Faso (p66) is perhaps as outstanding as the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Both are built to serve academic communities; both have great understanding of available material resources and their tectonic potential; both sensitively respond to local climate, and both generate fine and appropriate spaces for study, ones in which relationships of individual to society are subtly nuanced. Both were made by architects of great passion and determination.

If the Awards are a bit patchy, all premiated schemes in their different ways respond imaginatively to the need to improve our relationships to the planet and each other. Almost all have much to teach. As a group, they show the great variety of the Muslim world and the plurality that Islamic culture at its best can engender. Other societies could begin to learn. P.D.

NOBLE VOLUME

The heroic Great Library of Alexandria clearly merited an Aga Khan Award.

When a decent history of the architecture of the second half of the twentieth century comes to be written, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina will surely be recognized as one of the greatest buildings of the period. Its inception was remarkable. The University of Alexandria wanted a new library and decided to make a bid to create a memorial to the Great Library of antiquity. President Mubarak was inspired; he took the project up at national, and later global level. An international competition was held in 1989 and won by the virtually unknown Oslo-based practice Snohetta. Few expected that much would come of it. The vast size of the project, unknown and inexperienced architects, titanic cash problems, the difficulties of Egyptian bureaucracy, all suggested that the scheme would simply fade away, or at best be monstrously transformed in the hands of a commercially successful firm of professional philistines.

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But Mubarak and the local team persevered, raised the funds and ensured that the building was triumphantly opened in 2002, when it appeared very little different from the drawings submitted 13 years before. The architectural world caught its breath: here was a huge building of great quality that had been created with virtually no precedents and which could not be pigeon-holed under any stylistic label. In the most unlikely place, it had been executed with amazing tenacity by the architects and their collaborators, the local engineering specialists Hamza Associates. It admirably fulfilled the stringent demands of local planning authorities and of a very complex brief which, apart from the reading room, required huge stacks, seven research centres, three galleries, a planetarium, six specialist libraries, offices, a cafeteria and much more.

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The tilted disc, which is so authoritatively yet gently inserted into the frenetic corniche architecture of the eastern harbour, is now an internationally recognized symbol and, according to some, is a symbol of the ancient Egyptian sun god Ra. But its form comes from basic functional and structural requirements. The urban planning height limit ensured that much of the bulk of the building had to be underground. To dig several stories down so near to the sea meant that a huge waterproof container had to be created. A circular form was the simplest way of making a structure that could resist underground pressures. Hence the circular plan of the great reading space and the toroidal form. The substructure is extraordinary, with tension piles under the shallow north side and compression ones under the heavy south side to prevent the imbalanced loading causing the whole thing to turn over backwards. The concrete diaphragm wall is the largest yet built, and has no expansion joints, but many measures for preventing water penetration.

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In the reading room, eight terraces give human scale to the big volume. Slender, mosque-like concrete columns further modify the scale and support the glass roof, which is carefully designed to maximize north light while keeping the sun's rays out. Small elements of green and blue glass allow patches of these Islamic colours to move round the interior, following the sun. Detailing is generally immaculate, both here and elsewhere. The jury welcomed the way in which the library 'provides a model for bringing together the international community and encouraging cooperation and commitment from society as a whole'. Not only the international community benefits; new life attracted to Alexandria by the completion of the library has caused improvements in urban infrastructure and accommodation. The only problems seem to be the rather arid entrance piazza (which can presumably be improved by landscaping) and the building's popularity. Initially, when the library opened free, 18 000 visitors a day were cramming themselves in and interfering with the work of real users. A charging system for visitors has reluctantly had to be introduced, but entry is cheap, even at foreigners' rates. The place now works well as a scholarly instrument, even though it remains a bit crowded.

A more extensive description of the library is in AR September 2001.

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LEARNING FROM THE EARTH

This innovative building sets a standard for all dry West Africa.

The primary school at Gando in Burkina Faso has been created by imagination, energy and determination. Diebedo Francis Kere was the first person from his poverty-stricken West African village ever to have gone to university, and it was when he was an architectural student in Berlin that he conceived the idea of building a village school to replace the old one, which was decaying, dark and climatically inappropriate, so it was little used, and the village continued to slumber slowly downhill.

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Kere set about raising money for the new building with a campaign in Germany, Schulbausteine fur Gando, that provided enough for him to set the project in train. It was essential that building should be undertaken by the 3000 villagers themselves, and that it could be created out of cheap, readily available materials. In plan, the school consists of three classrooms arranged under a generously overhanging rectangular roof. Between the classrooms are covered but unwalled spaces that can be used as play and outdoor teaching areas.

Walls are made of earth blocks manufactured using local raw material and simple hand-powered machines. A continuous concrete ring beam, cast in situ, links the classrooms and is supported at each end on columns of earth blocks (edges are rounded to prevent accidents). The ring provides a structural base for the roof of corrugated metal sheeting and for the classroom ceilings that are made of earth blocks similar to those used in the walls. Concrete ceiling joists span from side to side of the ring beam, and the blocks are supported on reinforcing bars suspended between them. The joists also provide a base for the space frame that supports the roof. (It was essential to make a lightweight roof structure to avoid the use of cranes, which would have been totally uneconomic.) The frame was made from reinforcing bars, bent and welded together on site and erected in sections by a few people. Very little timber has been used because hardwood is difficult to obtain, and it is subject to termite attack, so doors and window shutters are prefabricated in steel, components made by Burkina Faso smiths.

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The heavy blockwork walls and ceilings, and the beaten earth floors provide thermal mass and reduce temperature fluctuations. The metal roof protects the earth block elements from rain, and it shades the ceilings; the space between roof and ceilings acts as a wind channel, providing a degree of cooling to the ceiling blocks. Shutters of large windows on both sides of the classrooms can be opened, admitting light and air. The whole atmosphere is completely different from that of the dark and musty original school.

The cost was under US$30 000. Additional works (such as the lavatory block, fencing for the vegetable garden and a well) were partly funded by the Danish agency for Development Assistance. The only potentially serious problem appears to be undersizing of the ceiling bars; ceilings are beginning to sag, a tendency not helped by some of the pupils who use the steel shutters as ladders to climb up into the roof space. But the difficulty will doubtless be overcome and, propelled by Kere's enormous and infectious enthusiasm, the school should become a development model for the whole area.

OPEN HOUSE

This house captures nature and landscape in multiple frames defining the site's ancient atmosphere.

The B2 holiday house by Han Tumertekin, in a hamlet in northwestern Anatolia, is for two brothers who wanted a refuge in which to contemplate the natural world and escape from business life. The rectangular box stands on a terrace outside the village, and has magnificent views southwards over traditional dry landscape towards the Aegean Sea.

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B2 is simple in concept. The terrace is carved out of a site that slopes steeply southward towards the sea below. On the ground floor is a long rectangular living room with a kitchenette forming part of the 1.2m deep utility wall. Above, the rectangle is divided to provide two bedrooms, each with a tiny bathroom set in the utility zone over the kitchenette. South walls are formed of large sliding floor-to-ceiling windows with, outside them, folding panels of local reeds in aluminium frames. In winter or at night, the reeds form an outer skin; at other times, they can be folded back as panels to frame the view. The notion of framing the natural with human-made is echoed in various ways throughout the design, principally in the east and west end walls, where panels of local rubble are framed by the load-bearing in-situ concrete box structure. Curiously, there is no internal stair. To avoid compromising the spaces, the brothers were prepared to have an external one, a steel structure with timber treads, on the north side of the concrete and masonry box.

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With a flimsy stair, inconvenient to use and clumsily added to the massive but elegant box, it is hard to see why the house was given an award. An award-winning building is intended to act as a model. The jury was much impressed by the ways in which 'the house functions as an apparatus for perceiving nature', by the fact that it was designed to be built by local labour, and by the way in which materials were chosen to be in sympathy with vernacular buildings. But many new Mediterranean holiday houses have all these qualities. That said, the south-facing internal spaces are beautifully honed.

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MOSQUE RESCUED

Painstaking care at a time of violence and deep political unrest has restored this tiny mosque as a centre for its community.

The Aga's Awards have always recognized exemplary restorations because they link present and past, and by restoring fine old buildings we have models for judging the quality of contemporary work. This award cycle honours a tiny mosque, set by itself in arid country some 40km south-west of Sana'a, capital of the Yemen. Nearly 900 years old, it is almost cubic, built of local stone and brick with a timber ceiling and roof supported on six stone columns, four of which are pre-Islamic. The ceiling is the glory of the building. In complete contrast to the walls, which are extremely plain externally, it is formed of wooden coffers which are richly decorated in gold, red, black and white tempera.

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In the early '80s, the Al-Abbas Mosque was in terrible condition. A hole in the roof allowed water to soak parts of the ceiling; the timber structure from which the coffers were suspended was decaying. Even at a time of severe political unrest, the Yemeni government determined to restore the building. Working with the Centre Francais d'Etudes Yemenites, the government arranged for the ceiling to be dismantled and transported to the museum in Sana'a, where cleaning and restoration were undertaken by a local team under Francois de Bazelaire. In the event, only a small part (0.5 per cent) of the coffering had to be completely replaced. Patterns were faithfully repainted (though some areas were simply cleaned to show the state of the ceiling before restoration), and new wood was left undecorated.

At the same time, repairs to the structure and masonry were set in hand by Abdullah al-Hadrami (who had previously won an Aga Khan Award for his contributions to the Old City of Sana'a, AR November 1995). He believes that traditional methods should be used wherever possible. Previous erroneous repairs to the masonry were demolished and replaced with new bricks of similar size and composition to the original ones. The roof structure was repaired and a new covering of qudad was applied (the traditional waterproofing composition is made of one part lime to three of volcanic aggregate compacted and smoothed, then daubed with warm animal fat). Crenellations (merlons) on the perimeter of the roof were repaired or rebuilt. The mihrab (Mecca facing niche) was restored with decorations similar to those of the ceiling.

The ceiling's suspension structure was reinforced and re-supported, and the inside of the attic between ceiling and roof was plastered to prevent dust falling on the ceiling. Then the coffers were returned to the mosque row by row and fixed in place. After ten years, one of the most ancient and splendid interiors of Arabia had been brought to life again. The jury commended the way the restoration principles set a standard for work on other ancient buildings in the area, and the fact that, since renovation, the mosque has again become a focus for the local community.

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SANDBAG REFUGE

A system for housing displaced and poor people is made of universally available materials.

Up to now, the Aga Khan Awards have been given for completed buildings, assessed after some time in use. The sole exception is in this cycle--a prototype temporary housing system made from sandbags. It was invented by Nader Khalili, an Iranian architect who set up the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth) in 1991.

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Khalili's aim was to generate a system that can be used anywhere, erected with totally unskilled labour, and which is sustainable in environmental terms. It had to have thermal mass to overcome the problems of tents in difficult climates and be quick to build (traditional mud bricks take time to prepare and cure, and suitable earth is far from generally available).

In essence, the Cal-Earth system consists of long tubes of fabric (artificial or natural) that are normally used to make sacks. Any earth from the site can be used as fill, with or without natural stabilizers like cement, asphalt emulsion and lime. Amateurs can easily fill the tubes using simple agricultural tools, after which bags are arranged in a spiral that is gradually corbelled inwards as it ascends to form a dome. Ancillary spaces made in the same way can be added to the focal dome. Openings in walls are made as arches, or created as windows by inserting sections of large plastic tube at right angles to the coiled tubes.

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Ordinary galvanized barbed wire can be used between the tubes to provide reinforcement, and to make the structures resistant to earthquakes. Domes can be made permanent (or at least semi-permanent) by rendering them with mud, plaster or other locally available substances. Temporary structures, using organic sack fabric, simply revert to the earth when they are no longer needed (the barbed wire can be re-used).

Experimental structures have been created in places as far apart as Chile and Canada, and the system has even been contemplated by NASA for use on the moon. The only scheme that involved more than a few structures was built in Iran in 1994 to house Iraqi refugees who had fled from Saddam. An examination of the project by the United Nations Development Programme found that it was not popular with the refugees, who disliked the circular space and objected to the temporary nature of the structures. But many people have trained at Cal-Earth and carry the techniques all over the world: further experiments are needed.

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TOWER POWER

At last, a huge commercial complex wins an Aga Khan Award.

For years, the Aga Khan Awards organization has been searching for examples of modern commercial and industrial buildings for Muslim communities. Several have been celebrated in the past, but undoubtedly. Cesar Pelli's Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur form the most dramatic commercial complex to achieve an award so far. The brief required the towers to incorporate advanced technology while symbolizing local and national aspirations; Pelli says that he was asked to make a 'Malaysian building'. For a while, the towers jointly enjoyed that most ephemeral of distinctions, the world's tallest building (ironically, on the very day of the Aga Khan Award ceremony in Delhi last month, news arrived that the title had passed to a tower in Taiwan).

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The Petronas development dominates the new business centre of the Malaysian capital; each tower has 88 floors and they are joined by a double-height bridge at 41st and 42nd floors. Conical spires on top support pinnacles that enabled the towers to obtain the coveted height record. The towers are joined by a plinth containing lobby, the concert hall of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra and a retail and leisure complex with shopping malls, cafes, restaurants, library, art gallery and an interactive science discovery centre. The plinth comes down to the ground as arcades, reminiscent of the traditional 5ft ways formed in front of the shophouses of south-east Asia (see for instance AR December 2002).

To try to generate an architecture appropriate for a very large modern complex, yet which responds to Malaysian tradition, the architects generated the basic tower plans by rotating two interlocking squares to generate an eight-pointed star, a traditional Islamic motif. This was modified by putting semi-circles in the reentrant angles, and further modified by tapering the towers towards the top with six set-backs, somewhat reminiscent on a huge scale of the forms of some Hindu temples. The basic structure of the towers is formed by a ring of 16 cylindrical columns made of high strength concrete connected by arched ring beams. They taper gradually as they rise from a base diameter of 2.4m and, as they approach the top, they are inclined inwards to come together under the pinnacles. A 23m square concrete core contains services and vertical circulation (lifts are double-deckers to reduce waiting times and the footprint of the shafts).

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Cladding is of stainless steel and laminated, tinted, heat reducing glass. Each floor has decorative stainless-steel brise-soleil to cut down glare, but it is difficult to believe that these eyebrows do much to cut down heat gain (15 per cent reduction is the official figure). The main means of controlling internal climate is an air-conditioning system that uses heat energy from exhaust ventilation to power cooling and dehumidifying of air drawn into the building; this is claimed to reduce electrical consumption for climate control by 50 per cent.

The towers are not entirely successful at the lower levels, where they do little or nothing to integrate a confused urban structure. But surveys of popular opinion in Kuala Lumpur have shown that the Petronas complex is widely regarded as a symbol of the city and the nation, like Sydney Opera House and the Eiffel Tower. The main reasons given for liking the towers are because they are mixed use, tall, and incorporate advanced technology. Their intended Islamic character is little perceived and, though someone has suggested that the corrugated carapace has some resemblance to that of the Mughal Qutub Minar tower in Delhi, Pelli denies any direct influence, and few can see the symbolic significance of the plan diagram in the completed building.

CIVIC MOSAIC

A series of particular initiatives to regenerate the life and texture of old Jerusalem.

The Old City of Jerusalem is one of the most ancient human settlements to have remained in continuous use (it is far older than Rome for instance), and its interleaved layers of successive cultures form an immensely rich texture, with elements ranging from the earliest times to the present. The Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent provided the city with a wall and divided it into quarters, Jewish, Arab and Christian (in topographical terms, the Temple Mount is the fourth quarter). Over 90 per cent of the people living in the Arab and Christian quarters are Palestinians.

The city's fabric has suffered much from neglect, inappropriate use and inadequate services. Overcrowding has become very serious, particularly since 1995, when Israeli law demanded that natives of Jerusalem living outside the city must return to it to keep their identification papers. Such has been the pressure for space that original vaults and domes have been destroyed so that properties could expand vertically, often using incompatible materials. Usually, shared kitchen and lavatory facilities were overstrained and badly installed, causing serious problems to human and building health.

In response, the Welfare Association (Ta'awoun), a Geneva-based NGO set up to support Palestinians in developing areas, opened a Jerusalem office, the Old City of Jerusalem Revitalisation Programme (OCJRP). It has a programme for rehabilitation of the old city. There is no attempt to restore a whole area, but selected interventions have been made throughout the urban fabric in the hope that, gradually, everywhere will benefit. By the end of 2003, 96 families, 60 shops and 12 institutions (including parts of the Department of Islamic Waqf, and the Al-Quds University) had been included in the programme.

A survey showed which elements were most in need. Building types included public centres like mosques, churches, madrasas (religious schools) and hostels, some of which retain their original functions, while others are put to new use. Existing housing, either in two- and three-storey street-facing blocks, or traditional hosh (groups of households grouped round courtyards), has been improved by providing separate lavatories and kitchens. Geometrical problems were very complex, and not made simpler by the fact that residents usually had to continue to live in their houses while work was going on because hiring alternative accommodation would be impossibly expensive. Work varies in duration from a few months for a house to years for major public complexes such as improvements to the Burj al Laqlaq, which were started in 1996 and continue today.

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Political problems have added to OCJRP's difficulties. Delivery of materials and access for site staff have always been problematic. Originally, contractors and craftsmen came not only from Jerusalem, but other parts of Palestine. Erection of Israel's controversial security barrier has greatly reduced accessibility from the occupied territories, so more expensive labour has to be hired within the city itself. But the programme has provided jobs and training for workers and professional people. It has founded an outreach and participation scheme that has raised occupants' consciousness of their extraordinary environment.

As Michael Sorkin, the Award technical assessor, stressed in his report, the project's strength 'lies in its ability to combine the loving care of a peerless historic environment with devoted attention to Jerusalem as a living environment that must be adapted to a range of human needs'.

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* Chaired by Farshid Moussavi (FOA, London). Other members: Ghada Amer (Egyptian artist). Hanif Kara (structural engineer, London), Rahul Mehrotra (architect, Bombay). Modjtaba Sadria (philosopher, Chuo University, Tokyo), Reinhard Schulze (professor of Islamic Studies, Bem University), Elias Torres Tur (architect, Barcelona), Billie Tsien (Williams & Tsien, architects, New York), Jafar Tukan (architect, Amman).