Steering Committee

Mohammad al-Asad is a Jordanian architect and architectural historian. He is the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Built Environment in Amman. Dr. al-Asad studied architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and history of architecture at Harvard University, before taking post-doctoral research positions at Harvard and at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

He has taught at the University of Jordan, Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was Alan K. and Leonarda Laing Distinguished Visiting Professor. He was also an adjunct professor at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Dr. al-Asad has published in both Arabic and English on the architecture of the Islamic world, in books and academic and professional journals. He is the author of Old Houses of Jordan: Amman 1920-1950 (1997) and Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism in the Middle East (2012); and co-author, with Ghazi Bisheh and Fawzi Zayadine, of The Umayyads: The Rise of Islamic Art (2000) and, with Sahel Al Hiyari and Álvaro Siza, of Sahel Al Hiyari Projects (2005). He has also edited the proceedings of three Aga Khan Award for Architecture seminars: Shaping Cities: Emerging Models of Planning Practices (2016), Workplaces: The Transformation of Places of Production: Industrialization and the Built Environment in the Islamic World (2010) and (co-edited with Majd Musa) Architectural Journalism and Criticism: Global Perspectives (2007).

Dr. al-Asad has been a member of the board of directors of the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, part of the Royal Society for Fine Arts. He served as a project reviewer for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture during the 1989, 1995, 1998, 2004 and 2007 Award cycles, and was a member of the Steering Committee in 2010, 2013 and 2016.

Hanif Kara is a practicing structural engineer and Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He is co-founder of AKT II London, where his design-led approach and interest in innovative forms, sustainable construction and complex analysis methods have allowed him to work on many pioneering projects. Under his design leadership, the practice has won over 300 design awards including the RIBA Stirling Prize for Peckham Library in 2000, and for Sainsbury Laboratory in 2012, as well as the RIBA Lubetkin Prize for the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010.

Professor Kara’s career extends beyond structural engineering disciplines. In 2011 he became the first engineer to serve as a judge for the annual RIBA Stirling Prize. He is a member of the board of trustees of the Architecture Foundation in London, and currently serves on a number of infrastructure design panels for the design council CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment). From 2008 to 2011 he served as a commissioner for CABE, and as one of 15 members of the Design for London Advisory Group to the Mayor of London (2007- 2008). Professor Kara was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2007. In 2014, he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Professor Kara has published and lectured widely on issues of design, as well as editing the volumes Design Engineering (2008), Interdisciplinary Design: New Lessons from Architecture and Engineering (2012), and most recently, Design Engineering Refocused (2017) and Architecture & Waste (2017). He was a member of the Steering Committee for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016, served on the Award Master Jury in 2004, and was a project reviewer for the Award in 2007, 2010 and 2013.

Azim Nanji is Special Advisor to the Provost at the Aga Khan University, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa, a joint partnership between His Highness the Aga Khan and the Government of Canada. He was born in Nairobi, Kenya and attended schools in Kenya and Tanzania before graduating from Makerere University in Uganda. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees in Islamic Studies from McGill University in Canada.

Professor Nanji has held several academic and administrative appointments, most recently as Senior Associate Director of the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University, where he was also lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies. From 1998 to 2008,

Professor Nanji served as Director of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. In 1988, he was Margaret Gest Visiting Professor at Haverford College, and from 1989 to 1998 he was Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. From 1974 to 1976 he was a Killam Fellow at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada.

Professor Nanji has published numerous books and articles on religious studies, ethics, Islam and Ismailism. His publications include a monograph on the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Building for Tomorrow (1994).

Within the Aga Khan Development Network, Professor Nanji serves as a member of the Academic and Student Affairs Committee of the AKU Board of Trustees and the Academic Advisory Committee for the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC), and as member of the Madrasa-based Early Childhood Education Programme in East Africa. He was recently appointed to the first Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards. He served as a member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1998, 2001 and 2016, and was a member of the Master Jury for the Award in 1992.

Brigitte Shim is a principal of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects and a professor at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. Professor Shim and her partner A. Howard Sutcliffe founded their design practice Shim-Sutcliffe in 1994, enabling them to explore their shared interest and passion for the interrelated scales of architecture, landscape, furniture and fittings. To date, they have received 14 Governor General’s Medals for Architecture and an American Institute of Architects National Honor Award, along with many other professional accolades for their built work.

At the University of Toronto, Professor Shim teaches core design studios, advanced design studios, and courses in the History and Theory of Landscape Architecture. Her visiting professorships include the Eero Saarinen Visiting Professor at Yale University (2014, 2010, 2005) and (with Sutcliffe) the University of Auckland Distinguished Visitor Award from the university’s National Institute for Creative Arts and Industries within the School of Architecture and Planning.

Professor Shim has lectured widely and participated in invited international design juries and symposia around the world. She has served on Canada’s National Capital Commission Architectural Advisory Board for over a decade and is currently serving on Waterfront Toronto’s Design Review Panel.

Brigitte Shim is a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (FRAIC), an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (Hon FAIA) and an elected member of the Royal Canadian Academy (RCA). In 2013, Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe were awarded the Order of Canada, along with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, “for their contributions as architects designing sophisticated structures that represent the best of Canadian design to the world”.

Professor Shim served on the 2007 Master Jury for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, as a project reviewer in 2010, and was a member of the Award Steering Committee in 2016.