Beirut to Singapore, 9 projects win prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture

The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 4, 2007


KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: A public square in Beirut, a skyscraper in Singapore and a renovated ancient city in Yemen are among the nine winners of the 2007 Aga Khan Award for Architecture, which celebrate the mundane to the magnificent around the globe.

The nine winning projects, announced Tuesday, will share the US$500,000 (€385,000) award given once every three years by the Aga Khan Development Network, a group of agencies that seek to improve living conditions in poor countries.

The network is headed by Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of the Shiite Ismaili Muslims, a community of 15 million people living in 25 countries.
Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced the awards at a ceremony in the Dewan Philharmonic Hall of the Petronas Twin Towers, which won the award in 2004.

Farrokh Derakhshani, the director of the awards, said the jury looks beyond visual appeal.

The award, established in 1977, recognizes architectural excellence in places where Muslims live. It covers the fields of contemporary design, social housing, community improvement, historical preservation, reuse and area conservation, as well as landscape design and improvement of environment.

"You are not looking at a good nice facade, but (at) how do you go beyond it," Derakhshani said. "It is the timing, the contemporary needs. We are trying to address the issues of the day: environment, collaboration, education, use of most modern technology."

The projects that won the latest award are:

_ The Samir Kassir Square in Beirut, named for a Lebanese journalist who was slain there, is a serene public space surrounded by hectic urban development and rebuilding. The award will go to architect Vladimir Djurovic, who "created a space of reflection with two trees and a pool and made the square a focal point for the people of the city," said Derakhshani.

_ The rehabilitation of the city of Shibam in Yemen. A centuries-old city of mud houses six to seven stories high. The city began degrading from water when plumbing was brought in. A five-year collaborative effort between a German agency and the Yemeni government helped preserve the city.

_ The University of Technology Petronas in Malaysia, known for its high-tech architecture.

_ The renovation of the walled city of Nicosia, Cyprus, a collaborative effort between the divided Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. The project reversed the city's physical and economic decline.

_ The Central Market in Koudougou, Burkina Faso. The architects introduced simple improvements to create an important space for civic exchange and trade.

_ Restoration of the Amiriya Complex in Yemen, which protected a cultural heritage.

_ The 28-story Moulmein Rise Residential Tower in Singapore, which uses innovative techniques for tropical design in high-rise living. It incorporates the traditional monsoon window, a horizontal opening that lets in breezes but not rain.

_ The Royal Netherlands Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a contemporary structure that merges with its local environment.

_ A school in Rudrapur, Bangladesh. Using local material, this simple structure was hand-built in four months by the local community and volunteer architects from Germany and Austria.

The award jury was presented with 343 projects, of which 27 were shortlisted after onsite review by international experts. The number of winners varies in every award cycle. The projects need not be new.

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On the Net:
Aga Khan Award for Architecture Web site:
http://www.akdn.org/architecture (http://www.akdn.org/architecture)

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http://78.136.16.169/image/P0340902.jpg

http://78.136.16.169/image/P0340903.jpg

http://78.136.16.169/image/P0340904.jpg

Its Simple but very beautiful...Where exactly is it? What are those buildings being constructed across the street and right next to it? I love that old building in the 1st pic..hope they fix it

Is this in Beirut??

Is this in Beirut??

Yes it is, on Weygand st near the Nahar building & Martyrs sq

http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=33.897643&lon=35.506707&z=18&l=0&m=a&v=2

^^That's Wonderful

It looks very beautiful,DT is full of Gorgeous Squares,it's next to 'le gray'Beirut Hotel.that area is gonna be heaven to pedistrians,especially when the 'Gardens of forgiveness' is complete.

Its Simple but very beautiful...Where exactly is it? What are those buildings being constructed across the street and right next to it? I love that old building in the 1st pic..hope they fix it


The square was built by An-Nahar, whose headquarters is right next-door.

There is also a bronze statue of Samir Kassir (wearing a red/white March 14 scarf).

Nadini, I think you posted close-up pic of it once can you post it here?

Landscape architecture well beyond trees and shrubs
For years, Vladimir Djurovic has been bringing nature back into design as a tonic for contemporary life, and now he's won an Aga Khan Award
By Kaelen Wilson-Goldie
Daily Star staff
Thursday, September 06, 2007

http://www.dailystar.com.lb//admin/storage/articles/200795229440.10-b.JPG

Interview

BEIRUT: "You cannot design anything unless you go and spend time on the site," says Vladimir Djurovic, the landscape architect whose scheme for the Samir Kassir Square in Downtown Beirut won an Aga Khan Award for Architecture on Tuesday. Djurovic has a three-tiered approach to all his projects, whether they are exquisite private residences tucked up high in the mountains, the gardens that connect iconic commercial towers to the surrounding city or public spaces like the award-winning square that are seamlessly stitched into a stubbornly complex urban fabric.

First he meets with the client. If there is chemistry, he proceeds. If there is none, he stops and politely declines the commission. "Chemistry is the number one thing," he says, "and without it nothing can happen." Then he visits the site, first with the client and then on his own, "to absorb it," he says. Finally, if he sees eye-to-eye with the client and if he feels the site itself, Djurovic retires to his office in Broummana to work, think and toil, and eventually produce, present and probably revise a design.

Djurovic can afford to be picky about his process at this point. The Aga Khan Award may be a crowning achievement, but it is also well-deserved. Over the past 12 years, Djurovic has worked hard for it.

One of the defining features of the Aga Khan Awards, aside from being the most lucrative architecture prizes in the world and geared toward designs that have an impact on Islamic societies, is that they are granted to projects rather than architects. They go against the contentious grain of starchitecture by championing the actual elements and gestures of design over status or signature.

Created in 1977 by the Aga Khan Development Network, the awards are given on a rigorous three-year cycle. The nine-member jury for the 2007 prizes was particularly formidable, including postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha, contemporary art curator Okwui Enwezor, Jordanian architect and artist Sahel al-Hiyari, Iranian sculptor Shirazeh Houshiary and the writer and scholar Rashid Khalidi.

Of 343 nominations, the jury short-listed 27 and awarded nine, ranging from the rehabilitation of Shibam (a city of mud-brick high-rise buildings in Yemen) and the restoration of the 16th-century Amiriya Complex (a project that employed 500 artisans and craftsmen in Rada, Yemen) to the Koudougou Central Market in Burkina Faso and a school built by hand in the Bangladeshi village of Dinajpur.

Also among the winners were Malaysia's University of Technology Petronas by Pritzker Prize-winning British architect Norman Forster, the Dutch Embassy in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa and the rehabilitation of the walled city of Nicosia in Cyprus.

"It was our privilege to be faced with architectural projects that raised important issues about an umma that is democratic and dialogical," wrote the jury members in their final statement. "Recognizing that Muslim realities have come to be rooted in historical and social circumstances beyond their usual 'national' or tradition settings," they added, was "not a repudiation of values and traditions but rather an opportunity for cultural revision and intercultural communication."

In their citation for the Samir Kassir Square, the jury members noted the graceful duality of the space - which can be read either as a simple assemblage of spare elements or a "highly crafted and complex urban artifact" that skillfully intervenes in its surroundings. "This project conceives the public urban space as a shift in the city's rhythm."
http://www.dailystar.com.lb

Indeed, with its stone bench, timber deck and cascading waters of a reflecting pool beneath two stately ficus trees that are among the oldest in Beirut, the square is both pensive and serene, forcing the hectic and often chaotic pace of the Lebanese capital to quiet down and be still with a series of design moves that are elegant and minimal.

Of course, it is probably worth noting that when Djurovic designed the space for Solidere, it was only called "Square Four" and it wasn't yet home to the pastiche sculpture made in the vague likeness of the slain journalist for whom the site is now named. Yet it is an attribute of Djurovic's work that his design withstands the heavy dose of meaning and memorial that has been added to it.

Though Djurovic grew up in Beirut and continues to call Lebanon home, he is still considered a foreigner in official terms. His mother is Lebanese and his father is Serbian, and because national identity is determined along strict patriarchal lines, he still doesn't hold a Lebanese passport.

Djurovic studied in both Britain and the US and his education in landscape architecture lasted 11 years. That is standard, he insists, as is taking the Landscape Architect Registration Exam. "When I first came back to Lebanon people didn't know what landscape architecture was. It is not where you plant this or that tree," he says with a frown, irked to this day by the local lack of understanding and appreciation for his craft.

As the story goes, Djurovic began his career with a drawing board on his parents' balcony. In the early days he carried a tape measurer around with him everywhere and took the dimensions of everything. He now has a staff of 15, no intention to grow the firm any larger and a waiting list of at least three months that suits him fine. Like so many architects in Lebanon now, projects outside the country - in Jordan, Qatar and Dubai, in Thailand, in Miami and Cannes and in the Indian cities of New Delhi, Bangalore and Pune - occupy 90 percent of his workload.

Still, his projects closer to home include two memorial gardens (for Rafik Hariri and Gebran Tueni, respectively), the Beirut Marina with Steven Holl, Platinum Tower with Ricardo Bofil and Nabil Gholam, and scores of other commercial and residential projects. But probably the most high-profile project on his plate is, coincidentally enough, the public spaces around the Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Center in Toronto, which is expected to be complete by 2010. What goes around comes around.

"We are continuously trying to do things that people haven't seen before. If they've seen it before," he says, there's no point in repeating it. "What we do is conceptual. Architecture and interior design need complements." Djurovic works on the edge where landscape meets the other two disciplines, and his gift lies in his ability to blur the boundaries into a smooth and singular experience. Whether framing sky, catching a sunset's reflection on water or honoring those two grandfatherly ficus trees, he brings nature back into the equation as a necessary tonic for contemporary life.

Why in the last pic Beirut posted in post #2 the trees are in water??

^^ it just seems so from that angle beirut_guy, it is not in the water

^^It's ok, i understood now when i looked closer to the pic, thx Nadini and btw my nickname is Beirut guy without the underscore but it's ok i u call me beirut_guy :)

Thank you for the map K

I passed by this place thousands of times and i never noticed this square :s

Pics taken in May 07

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/8893/beirut267lq1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/1351/beirut268rl9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/8779/beirut269nm5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

is it just me or is that statue extremely unproportional?!

^^ Yeah it's not proportional.. I don't know why!

Lol it looks funny..it looks like a wooden leg....One article said it barely resembles him..

http://img467.imageshack.us/img467/961/portraitsamirkassirfplu9.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

No, it does not! :ohno:

Here are some close up pics:

http://www.naharnet.com/domino/tn/NewsDesk.nsf/936b14e5ec36bb79c22566f7004e4b46/9955c62c5433ed60c2257182001fad22/Body/0.82?OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=jpg

http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/9831/c1n11ot.jpg

OMG is the statue doing yoga?:)

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/2558/1388079231522f35f571ocr5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

So were those trees originally there (ie for decades) for were they planted by the designers of the square?

^^ I think they were there previous to this, ill go through my files and find you a picture later, I remember seeing them before having that garden complete

So were those trees originally there (ie for decades) for were they planted by the designers of the square?

Those trees survived the war. There was a small public garden before 1975.

In this Video shot in February 1976 during a truce, the garden shows next to a partially destoyed building on Weygand st.

http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/?vue=notice&from=fulltext&full=liban&datedif_mois1=02&datedif_annee1=1976&num_notice=2&total_notices=3

http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/214/samirkassirsqor7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

^^GREAT PIC!!!a peace of haven in the middle of Beirut!

The surviving trees in Samir Kassir's Sq in 1991

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/8951/1991my1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/3103/paolajt0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Flickr.com


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