The Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the 12 months 2025 was introduced on Tuesday (September 2). While India, which has received the award solely six instances until date, didn’t even make the ultimate shortlist of 15 nations (19 studio initiatives have been shortlisted from 369 submitted this 12 months), South Asia has scored huge with Bangladesh and Pakistan among the seven winners of this version. The different awardees embody Palestine, China, Egypt and two winners from Iran. The profitable initiatives will share the $1 million award, one of many largest in structure. The award ceremony will probably be held on September 15 in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, for the very first time.
Organisations such because the Aga Khan Foundation have labored constantly to protect India’s wealthy Islamic architectural heritage, together with the newest in 2024, a state-of-the-art sunken museum, developed by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in partnership with the Archaeological Survey of India, on the iconic Sixteenth-century Humayun’s Tomb Complex in Delhi. The awarded Indian initiatives up to now embody Agra’s Mughal Sheraton Hotel, Bimal Hasmukh Patel’s Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India in Ahmedabad, Indore’s Aranya Community Housing, Lasur’s Lepers Hospital.
Here are the seven winners of the 2025 Aga Khan Award for Architecture:
Bangladesh
Marina Tabassum Architects received for its venture Khudi Bari, unfold throughout the nation. The khudi bari, actually that means “tiny house” in Bengali, is an instance of a reasonable and sturdy, modular cell handmade with bamboo and metal. In Bangladesh’s floodplains, by flash floods that end in land erosion and steady human displacement, khudi bari “is a replicable solution for displaced communities affected by climatic and geographic changes, that can be easily disassembled and reassembled.”
What received over the jury: “The project’s deep ecological framing, contributing to the global advancement of bamboo as a material.”
Pakistan
Mohammad Saifullah Siddiqui’s DB Studios’ multistorey facility Vision Pakistan, in Islamabad, stands distinct in a dense peri-urban space. The charity works with deprived 16-25-year-old delinquent males gripped by aggression, despair, drug use and crime. The constructing construction has a central atrium with a tall tree, ample daylighting, pure air flow, vibrant home windows with jaali work (pierced steel screens) and geometric patterns impressed from Pakistani and Arab crafts and Nineteen Sixties Islamabad structure.
What received over the jury: “The building… contains a new type of education… is full of light, spatially interesting and economically efficient.”
Palestine
AAU Anastas founders Elias and Yousef Anastas’ Wonder Cabinet, in Bethlehem, is a production-driven cultural area constructed with the enter of native artisans and contractors. The constructing, supported by Zurich‑based mostly non-profit Drosos Foundation, is a bit of Brutalist structure in uncooked concrete. In the hostile geopolitical pocket, in a rustic battered by an ongoing genocide, this award recognises its folks’s resilience to protect their tradition towards an unceasing onslaught.
What received over the jury: “…rooted in contemporary expressions of national identity, [the building] asserts the importance of cultural production as a means of resistance.”
Egypt
Revitalisation of Historic Esna, an ongoing venture by Kareem Ibrahim’s Takween Integrated Community Development addresses cultural tourism challenges by remodeling a uncared for website centred on the Temple of Khnum right into a prospering historic metropolis. It makes use of sustainable, recycled native supplies like mud-bricks and wooden. Conserved bodily works embody the 18th-century Wakalat al-Geddawi, Nineteenth-century Royal Guesthouse, Qisariyya Market and Bazaar Street, and many others.
What received over the jury: “…stimulates a historic urban metabolism to cope with the contemporary challenge of improving human conditions.”
Iran
Ehsan Rasoulof and Ali Rezvani’s ZAV Architects’ Majara Residence and Community Redevelopment is a shocking vibrant complicated whose 200 varying-sized vaults and domes mirror the rainbow island’s ochre-rich soils, offering sustainable vacationer lodging within the distinctive Hormuz Island. Built by the local people, the complicated contains the Rong Cultural Centre, the Majara Residence, a café and bicycle rental centre in two steel-reinforced super-adobe domes with connecting stairs.
What received over the jury: “…a vibrant archipelago of varying programmes that serve to incrementally build an alternative tourism economy.”
Unchecked car-oriented growth diminishes any city area’s liveability. Tehran isn’t any completely different. KA Architecture Studio’s triangular Jahad Metro Plaza is a once-dilapidated station remodeled right into a vibrant city node for pedestrians. Built utilizing once-neglected handmade bricks, it evokes historic Iranian architectural varieties. Its top variations produce an air- and light-permeable roof that mitigates site visitors noise.
What received over the jury: “…use of local handmade brick strengthening the connection with Iran’s rich architectural heritage with subtle texture emphasising a new urban monument.”
China
West Wusutu Village Community Centre, in Hohhot, by Zhang Pengju’s Inner Mongolian Grand Architecture Design Co. Ltd, is a multicultural neighborhood centre in a village. Spread over 1,276 sq. m, with a 203 sq. m central round courtyard and 786 sq. m rooftop platform, made with reclaimed bricks from native demolitions and sturdy 80mm fly-ash insulation layer, the centre addresses the cultural wants of the native multi-ethnic neighborhood, together with Hui Muslims who reside far-off from the principle mosque.
What received over the jury: “…a valuable shared and inclusive communal microcosm within a rural human macrocosm.”
