The Aga Khan Award for Architecture was established in 1977 by His Highness the Aga Khan, the 49th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, to enhance the understanding of Islamic culture and its architecture. The program, administered by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, recognizes and awards architectural excellence, with special concern for contemporary design, social housing, community development, restoration, conservation, and environmentalism. One of the principles of the Aga Khan Foundation has been to encourage sustainability whereby recipients of the Aga Khan’s largesse would themselves be able to reinvest in the future of their own communities. The Aga Khan’s influence is widespread and includes the establishment in the United States of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (1979), jointly run by the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and Harvard University, and the creation of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. In 1976 the Aga Khan announced that he would es...