Recent social, political and environmental upheavals have had a two-fold effect on the built environment in Third World countries. They have destroyed the traditional cultural structure in rural areas, which has led to homelessness and the marginalization of entire communities, and large-scale urbanization has become a powerful phenomenon of which the Islamic World is very much a part. Such global changes have had a dramatic impact on the jury for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, whose selections for 1992 are presented here. The projects selected this year, which address issues relevant to both the developing and developed world, are economically sustainable, humanistic solutions to difficult problems, and generate a new architectural language. They provide a valuable insight into an alternative design approach for both rural and urban environments. Essays by Suha Ozkan of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Mohammed Arkoun, Professor of Islamic Thought at the Sorbonne,Paris, and Arif Hasan, Pakistani architect and planner, place the projects within the context of the major social transition now underway, and an article by the late Hassan Fathy on Contemporaneity in the City provides a historical perspective. Each award-winning project is described in detail by Charles Moore and Selma al-Radi, and they are comparatively reviewed by James Steele, and a brief history of Samarkand, where the awards were presented, completes this volume. Read more... ]]>
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