Matt Reed, the Aga Khan Foundation’s CEO in the United Kingdom, introduces the Aga Khan Centre in London’s Knowledge Quarter, speaking on the challenge put to the building’s designer, Fumihiko Maki, the Pritzker Prize winning architect, by His Highness the Aga Khan. The Aga Khan talked about the three qualities that should animate any such building: openness, light and pluralism. 

Illustrating how these qualities are reflected in the design of the building, Mr Reed takes us through an “Open House” tour of the Aga Khan Centre, getting glimpses of the UK home for three organisations founded by His Highness the Aga Khan: The Institute of Ismaili Studies, the Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations and the Aga Khan Foundation UK. We also see the collection of gardens, courtyards and terraces that provide an insight into the diversity and influence of Islamic landscape design around the world and through history.

When it opened in the summer of 2018, the Aga Khan Centre completed a trio of signature buildings that Mr Maki has designed for the Aga Khan Development Network, following The Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat (Ottawa, Canada) and the Aga Khan Museum (Toronto, Canada).   

Watch this video to get a guided, virtual tour of the Aga Khan Centre. 

This video was released in September 2020 by the Aga Khan Foundation (UK).