ACT Professor and Director Azra Akšamija has been appointed to Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2025 Master Jury. 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. Dean Hashim Sarkis is on the steering committee.
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 emphasizes 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.
Azra Akšamija is an artist and architectural historian born in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and based in Boston. She is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Architecture, where she is the director of the Art, Culture and Technology Program. She is the founding director of the MIT Future Heritage Lab (FHL). She holds a MArch from Princeton University, a PhD in Architecture from MIT and a Diploma Engineer degree from the Technical University Graz.
Akšamija’s work explores the intersection of art, design, history and preservation, often focusing on cultural heritage, identity and social justice issues. Her artistic practice engages with topics such as the representation of Islam in the West, the agency and resilience of refugee communities, and the role of art in addressing social inequalities and environmental challenges. She is the author of two books: Mosque Manifesto: Propositions for Spaces of Coexistence (2015) and Museum Solidarity Lobby (2019); and the co-editor of Design to Live: Everyday Inventions from a Refugee Camp (2021) with Raafat Mazjoub and Melina Philippou.
She has exhibited her work in leading international venues and museums in Zagreb, Belgrade and Ljubljana, the Sculpture Center and Queens Museum of Art in New York, the Royal Academy of Arts London and Design Festivals in Milan, Istanbul, Eindhoven and Amman. Most recently, her work has been shown at the Kunsthaus Graz in 2024, the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024, the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023 and 2021, and the Aga Khan Museum Toronto in 2020. Her work has been recognised with the Art Award of the City of Graz in 2018, an honorary doctorate from the Montserrat College of Art (2020), the LafargeHolcim Award 2021 and the Emerging Voices Award by the Architectural League New York in 2022.
She received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2013 for her artistic work in the Altach Islamic Cemetery. She is the editor of the book Architecture of Coexistence, Building Pluralism published in 2020, which features Award recipients in Europe as case studies. She served as an on-site reviewer for the Award in 2016.
