Three cheers for the Aga Khan

The Aga Khan's architecture awards are surely the most impressive in the world. Set up in 1977 to celebrate buildings and planning schemes that can help improve life in countries 'in which Muslims have a significant presence', the triennial awards have been given to work mostly in Asia and Africa as different as housing for the very poorest, office towers, urban parks and squares, villas for the wealthy, rehabilitation of slums, conservation of palaces, fortresses and ancient walled cities.

Out of hundreds of projects submitted, the couple of dozen selected as finalists are visited and examined carefully in use by an architect or professionally qualified assessor. Their resulting reports form the basis for the Master Jury's decisions about what to award and how to split up the half million-dollar prize money. As far as I know, the Aga's awards are the only ones which involve performance in use, and which are given not only to architects, but also to clients, builders, and craftsmen. The prize money is divided in each case according to the assessors' recommendations, and at the awards ceremonies, black carpenters from central Africa, magnificently turbanned in traditional dress, are lined up with sharp-suited western planners, white-robed Arabs and elegant Chinese from Malaysia and Singapore.

This year's award winners are as diverse as usual. For me, the most moving is given for rehabilitation of Shibam in the Yemen. The city is one of the wonders of the world. It lies towards the head of the mythic Wadi Hadhramaut, the big green valley that runs down from the mountains of south Yemen to the Arabian Sea. The place emerges abrupt and dream-like out of the desert, a cluster of thin mud-brick 10- and 12-storey tower houses forming a compact labyrinth of lanes within a precise fortified perimeter; there are no suburbs. With German help, nearly 200 houses (about half the whole stock) have been restored, and social services have been extended. For instance, women are offered literacy and skills training; craftsmen are being taught, and agriculture in surrounding areas is being revived. Physical, social and economic structures have been enhanced, so the city and its community can be saved instead of facing imminent destruction by globalisation.

Working for clients at the other end of the economic scale, Foster+Partners, with Malaysian firm GDP, produced the University of Technology Petronas in jungle-clad hills some 300 km north of Kuala Lumpur. Here, a continuous lightweight canopy round a five-pointed landscaped central space protects a continuous path from tropical sun and rain and offers places for informal meetings as well as conventional teaching areas. At the same time, the forest flows through the complex. The university responds to climate and landscape, as well as the social and pedagogical needs of a new technical university.Another innovative prize-winning building from prosperous south-east Asia is the Moulmein Rise residential tower in Singapore by WOHA Architects. Moulmein Rise incorporates numerous passive climate-control devices, many based on tradition such as orientation, perforation, cross-ventilation, overhangs and shading. One of the most subtle devices is a new form of monsoon window in which a manually operated grille allows natural ventilation even at the height of a tropical storm. Such environmental measures are linked to a looseness in planning that allows individual tenants to achieve a measure of control over their own spaces. As the jury pointed out, the scheme can be regarded as a design approach that, if developed, could lead to new forms of environmentally friendly living in the tropics.

The other six award winners are recognised for similar combinations of tectonic, aesthetic, technical and social matters. There is the sixteenth century Amiriya palace complex, also in the Yemen, restored by Selma Al-Radi and Yahya Al-Nasiri, where more than 500 craftsmen have been trained in traditional techniques. A market in Burkina Faso by Laurent Séchaud uses a new form of compressed earth construction; a school in Bangladesh by Anna Heringer and Eike Roswag inventively combines traditional earth-and-bamboo construction with modern jointing techniques; a new and very simple square by landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic brings calm to war-torn central Beirut. Rehabilitation of the walled city of Nicosia is premiated partly because it is an outstanding example of co-operation between Turkish and Greek Cypriots and of the effects the work has had on the economy and life of the two communities. Curiously (for Ethiopia is not a Muslim country) the Netherlands embassy in Addis Ababa by Dick van Glameren and Bjarne gets an award, mainly for integration with its landscape.

But there is always the odd curiosity in the triennial list. What matters about the Aga Khan's architecture awards is that they are unconcerned with fashion, trends or dramatic gestures (for instance the only internationally well known name on this year's list is Foster, and this is the first Aga award the much medalled practice has won). Long before other awards, the Agas were concerned with sustainability, economics, climate, history, regionalism, context and social issues: above all with LIFE. I used to think that comparisons between slums and office blocks were impossible, but the Aga's criteria allow them. If this is what religiously based awards can be like, let's have the Pope's awards, the Patriarch's and the Dali Lama's.
 
Peter Davey is the former editor of The Architectural Review.