Aga Khan Award for Architecture announces 2025 Master Jury

Geneva, Switzerland, October 2024 – The Master Jury for the 2025 Aga Khan Award for Architecture was announced today. The independent panel, responsible for selecting the winners of the prestigious US$ 1 million Award, will meet in January to evaluate and shortlist projects from hundreds of nominations worldwide.

The nine members of the Master Jury for the 16th Award cycle (2023-2025) are:
•   Azra Akšamija, Professor & Director, Art, Culture and Technology Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA
•   Noura Al-Sayeh Holtrop, Advisor for Heritage Projects, Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, Manama, Bahrain
•   Lucia Allais, Director, Buell Center, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, New York, USA
•   David Basulto, Founder, ArchDaily, Santiago, Chile and Berlin, Germany
•   Yvonne Farrell, Academy of Architecture, Mendrisio, Switzerland; Founder and Partner, Grafton Architects, Dublin, Ireland
•   Kabage Karanja, Co-founder, Cave_bureau, Nairobi, Kenya; Assistant Professor of Architectural Design, Yale University, New Haven, USA
•   Yacouba Konaté, Professor of Philosophy, University Félix Houphouët Boigny of Abidjan-Cocody, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
•   Hassan Radoine, Director General & Full Professor, Citinnov SA for Integrated Territorial Planning and Smart Cities, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Rabat, Morocco
•   Mun Summ Wong, Professor-in-Practice, Department of Architecture, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore; Co-founding Director, WOHA, Singapore

Read their full bios

Following the selection of the shortlist, projects will undergo rigorous on-site reviews by independent experts, the majority of whom are architects, conservation specialists, planners or structural engineers. The Jury will meet for a second time in summer 2025 to examine the on-site reviews and select the final winners.
The selection process emphasises architecture that not only provides for people’s physical, social and economic needs, but also stimulates and responds to their cultural aspirations. Particular attention is given to building schemes that use local resources and appropriate technology in innovative ways and to projects likely to inspire similar efforts elsewhere.
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture is governed by a Steering Committee chaired by His Highness the Aga Khan. The other members of the Steering Committee are:
•   Meisa Batayneh, Principal Architect, Founder, maisam architects and engineers, Amman, Jordan
•   Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Professor in the departments of French and Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, USA
•   Lesley Lokko, Founder & Director, African Futures Institute, Accra, Ghana
•   Gülru Necipoğlu, Director and Professor of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
•   Hashim Sarkis, Dean, School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA
•   Sarah M. Whiting, Dean, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Farrokh Derakhshani is the Director of the Award.

NOTES
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture is part of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), which integrates cultural heritage into its broader development strategies.
AKTC works to preserve and promote the cultural and material heritage of Muslim societies, ensuring that culture plays a central role in improving economic prospects and providing hope to vulnerable communities. Its programmes include the Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme, which works to revitalise historic cities in the Muslim world, both culturally and socio-economically. For three decades, it has been engaged in the rehabilitation of historic areas in Cairo, Kabul, Herat, Aleppo, Delhi, Zanzibar, Mostar, northern Pakistan, Timbuktu and Mopti.
The programmes of AKTC also include the Aga Khan Music Awards, an interregional music and arts education programme with worldwide performance, outreach, mentoring and artistic production activities; the Education Programme, which aims to promote broader and deeper awareness amongst young people of the philosophy and values that underpin the efforts of the Trust; and the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, which provides visitors with a window into the artistic, intellectual and scientific contributions of Muslim civilizations to world heritage.
The Trust supports the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as www.ArchNet.org, a major online resource on Islamic architecture.