Preliminary study in preparation for the thesis for the SMArchS degree in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture. Topics include literature search, precedents examination, thesis structure and typologies, and short writing exercise.

Seminar on selected topics from the history of Islamic urbanism. Examines patterns of settlement, urbanization, development, and architectural production in various places and periods, ranging from the formative period in the 7th century to the new cities emerging today. Discusses the leading factors in shaping and transforming urban forms, design imperatives, cultural and economic structures, and social and civic attitudes. Critically analyzes the body of literature on Islamic urbanism.

Research paper required.

Critical review of literature on Islamic art and architecture in the last two centuries. Analyzes the cultural, disciplinary, and theoretical contours of the field and highlights the major figures that have influenced its evolution. Challenges the tacit assumptions and biases of standard studies of Islamic art and architecture and addresses historiographic and critical questions concerning how knowledge of a field is defined, produced, and reproduced.

4.619 Syllabus (MIT Certificate protected)

Examines the history of Islamic architecture and culture spanning fifteen centuries on three continents - Asia, Africa, Europe. Students study a number of representative examples, from the 7th century House of the Prophet to the current high-rises of Dubai, in conjunction with their urban, social, political, and intellectual environments at the time of their construction.

4.614 Syllabus (MIT Certificate Protected)

Preliminary study in preparation for the thesis for the SMArchS degree in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture. Topics include literature search, precedents examination, thesis structure and typologies, and short writing exercise.

"My country is no longer in Africa; we are now part of Europe. It is therefore natural for us to abandon our former ways and to adopt a new system adapted to our social conditions."   
 Khedive Isma'il, 1879

“Dubai….. is the new Cordoba.”
Sheikh Muhammad bin Rashid Al Maktum, 2006

 Today, Islamic architecture is a restive design category that is debated yet applied by scholars and practitioners alike.  Its definition in the last two centuries has undergone profound changes in substance and scope.  Beginning as revivalist trends that mimicked European historicism in the 19th century, Islamic architecture emerged as an identitarian style with the formation of modern nation-states in Asia and Africa.  After an interval in which vocal international modernism dominated, Islamic architecture came back on the wings of vernacular revival, critical regionalism, then postmodernism, which shaped its academic and professional parameters.  Recent critical challenges, including urban and ecological depredations, unprecedented wealth in the Gulf and socioeconomic disparities everywhere, and a radical Islamicist turn, provoked Islamic architecture to explore new sociocultural outlooks, environmentalist and climatic orientations, historic preservation and rehabilitation, as well as branding strategies.  This expanded purview at last ushered it into the global architectural discourse. 

This seminar analyzes how Islamic architecture, traditionally confined to an architecture of the past, became a contemporary design category.  It reconstructs the stages of its evolution and examines how it managed to incorporate diverse architectural, theoretical, political, cultural, technological, and socioeconomic currents within its core historicist foundation.  Finally, the seminar anticipates future directions of Islamic architecture as they can be gleaned in the shifts in the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the Gulf experiment with glitzy cutting-edge parametric design flavored with Islamic references.

Research paper required.