SOUK WAQIF, KATAR’DA ORİJİNAL İHTİŞAMINA DÖNDÜRÜLMEK ÜZERE RESTORE EDİLMİŞ.
people’s physical, social and economic needs, but that also stimulates and responds to their cultural and spiritual expectations. The AKAA gives particular attention to building schemes that use local resources and appropriate technology in an innovative way, and to projects likely to inspire similar efforts elsewhere. This is all done to meet the goal of modernization but within a sensitive and sustainable understanding of how people can live.
The 11th Cycle of the AKAA In the latest cycle, the 11th of the Award we can see the direction that AKAA has taken in the 19 shortlisted projects. These projects ranging geographically from Spain to China focus on many of today’s key social and ecological issues. They are not utopic suggestions meant to inspire but pragmatic built projects designed to meet immediate needs while providing a buildable example to the rest of the world. The ideas behind these projects are those shared by many of today’s practitioners committed to the social responsibilities of architecture while still maintaining a commitment to innovative design. Though this position echoes socially engaged movements of the past, the projects highlighted by the AKAA 11th cycle are not interested in grand manifestos or unsustainable theories. Instead, their commitment is to a pragmatism can be seen
in the projects they have realized, from a small school in China to a redevelopment of 19th century urban fabric in Tunis, from a museum of cultural heritage in Spain to a nature center that is ecotourist gateway to hard wood forest in Bangladesh. In this attention to new needs and requirements, Emre Arolat Architects’ Ipekyol Textile Factory for example was the first factory ever nominated for the Award showing how architecture can provide solutions in the industrialization process. Buildings such as Ipekyol show the AKAA commitment in the longstanding dialogue between architecture and society, in which the architect’s methods and approaches are being dramatically reevaluated. These shortlist buildings also propose an expanded definition of sustainability that adds to the existing agenda of experimentation with new materials and technologies to include concepts such as social and economic stewardship. Together, these undertakings not only offer practical solutions to basic needs, but also aim to have a broader effect on the communities in which they work, using design as a tool for progress and social change. Of these architects, many originating from the countries where their projects are located, we see a commitment to a long term view that architecture no matter how much a product of media, finance, philosophy, is ultimately responsible for how people live.
SOUK WAQIF IN DOHA, QATAR IS RESTORED TO ITS ORIGINAL SPLENDOR.
KASIM-ARALIK 2010 • NATURA 27