Steering Committee

Homi K. Bhabha is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities in the Department of English, Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, and Senior Advisor on the Humanities to the President and Provost at Harvard University. Professor Bhabha was born in India and educated at the University of Bombay and then at the University of Oxford. He is considered one of the most prominent and influential figures in the fields of postcolonial studies and cultural theory and his scholarly interests include cultural migration, globalization and human rights. Professor Bhabha has written extensively about race, gender, culture, and the arts; his works include Nation and Narration and The Location of Culture. Professor Bhabha has served as an advisor at key art institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Rockefeller Foundation. He is a member of the Asian Art Council at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, and an advisor on the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives project at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Professor Bhabha also serves on the advisory board of the Indo-US Commission on Museums; is a member and former Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Human Rights; and a Trustee of the UNESCO World Report on Cultural Diversity. He was a member of the 2007 Aga Khan Award for Architecture Master Jury and has served on the Award Steering Committee since 2008. 

Glenn Lowry is an art historian from the United States and Director of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Among the major exhibitions that have taken place during Mr. Lowry's tenure at MoMA are Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years (2007), Manet and the Execution of Maximilian (2007), Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul (2006), Pioneering Modern Painting: Cézanne and Pissarro 1865-1885 (2005), Matisse Picasso (2003), Mies in Berlin (2001), and Jackson Pollock (1998-1999). A noted scholar of Islamic arts and architecture, Mr. Lowry was previously Director of the Art Gallery of Ontario (1990-1995) and Curator of Near Eastern Art at the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art (1984-1990) where he organised, among other exhibitions, Timur and Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (1989) and A Jeweler's Eye: Islamic Arts of the Book from the Vever Collection (1988). Mr. Lowry's many honours include honorary doctorates from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (2000) and The College of William and Mary (2009), Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite (1994) and Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres (2001) from the French government, and the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Studies Award (1990). Mr. Lowry is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and American Philosophical Society.

An architect and educator, Mohsen Mostafavi is Dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design. He was formerly the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University, prior to which he served as the Chairman of the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He has taught at numerous institutions including the University of Pennsylvania, University of Cambridge and the Frankfurt Academy of Fine Arts (Städelschule). Mostafavi served on the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture from 2001 to 2013, and has served on the design committees of the London Development Agency (LDA) and the RIBA Gold Medal. He is a consultant on a number of international architectural and urban design projects, including a recent collaboration on the major technology park Skolkovo Innovation Center in Skolkovo, Russia; the Greenway Campus Project at Amherst College; and campus design at Weifang University. He was co-curator of the 5th China International Architectural Biennial 2013 in Beijing and the 2015 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season Main Exhibition Pavilion. His recent publications include Ecological Urbanism (co-edited 2010 and recently translated into Chinese, Portuguese, and Spanish); Implicate & Explicate (2011); Louis Vuitton: Architecture and Interiors (2011); In the Life of Cities (2012); Instigations: Engaging Architecture, Landscape, and the City (2012); Architecture Is Life (2013); Nicholas Hawksmoor: The London Churches (2015); and Ethics of the Urban: The City and the Spaces of the Political (forthcoming).

Han Tümertekin is a practicing architect based in Istanbul and principal of Mimarlar Tasarim Danismanlik Ltd., a firm he established in 1986. He previously worked as an architect in Paris. His work includes residential, commercial and institutional projects primarily in Turkey, as well as in the Netherlands, Japan, United Kingdom, France, China, Mongolia and Kenya. Mr. Tümertekin was trained in architecture at Istanbul Technical University and completed graduate studies in historic preservation at the University of Istanbul. In addition to his built work, he has been teaching architecture since 1992 at universities including Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design; Istanbul Technical University; Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne; Ecole Speciale d'Architecture,Paris; Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul; Uludag University, Bursa; and the Ecole d'Architecture in Strasbourg. He is one of the founders of the graduate programme in architecture at Bilgi University, Istanbul. Mr. Tümertekin’s works have been widely published in international architectural journals, including Domus, Abitare, AV, Oris, Architectural Review, L’architecture d’Aujourd’hui, the World Atlas of Contemporary Architecture, and the Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture. A monograph of his work was published by Harvard University Press in 2006. Mr. Tümertekin has received several architectural prizes, including an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004 for the B2 House in Ayvacık, Turkey. He served on the 2007 Master Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and has been a member of the Award Steering Committee since 2008.