Two Bangladeshis win the Aga Khan award for architecture

Two Bangladeshis have bagged the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

The announcement was made on Monday in Abu Dhabi.

Marina Tabassum and Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury have won the award for the design of Dhaka's Bait Ur Rouf Mosque and Gaibandha's Friendship Centre, respectively.

The $1 million prize is awarded every three years.

The award was institutionalised in 1977 by King Aga Khan and has since become an annual ritual "to identify and encourage building concepts that successfully addressed the needs and aspirations of communities in which Muslims have a significant presence", a press release by the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) said.

The six winners were chosen from 348 projects in 69 countries nominated for the award, and were announced in a ceremony in the renovated 19th century Jahili fort in the United Arab Emirates, Reuters reported.

The report said that the winners were chosen by an independent jury of architectural experts appointed by the Aga Khan Foundation, named after the wealthy leader of the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam.

The award money will be split between the architecture firms and clients involved in the winning projects and will partly go toward outreach activities to spread design and building knowledge.

The four other winners are:

# China

Hutong Children’s Library and Art Centre, Beijing (Architect: ZAO / standardarchitecture / Zhang Ke)

# Denmark

Superkilen, Copenhagen (Architects: BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group, Topotek 1 and Superflex)

# Iran

Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge, Tehran (Architect: Diba Tensile Architecture / Leila Araghian, Alireza Behzadi)

# Lebanon

Issam Fares Institute, Beirut (Architect: Zaha Hadid Architects)

Tabassum and Chowdhury both had finished their architecture studies in 1995 from BUET.

They then opened their joint architecture firm Urbana.

After a long spell of friendship, they tied the knot in 1997, but parted ways in 2005.

By then, they had designed the Independence Monument and Museum of Independence in Dhaka's Suhrawardy Udyan.

After separation, Tabassum opened her own firm Marina Tabassum Architects.

The Bait Ur Rouf mosque has no minaret or dome and rests on eight pillars.

The design won rave reviews of the jury for deviating creatively away from conventional designs of a religious place.

The mosque in a poor and flood-prone area of Bangladesh won recognition for pushing the boundaries of what a traditional religious space should look like, Award Director Farrokh Derakhshani said.

Local children are encouraged to play on the building's bare modernist space, unusual for a mosque, as shifting sunlight splashes patterns onto the dark interior floor.

The Friendship centre in Gaibandha is an NGO training centre made out of locally sourced material. The impressive design has an attractive roof is grass-thatched.

In its website AKDN said that the winners would be handed over the awards in November at a ceremony at the Al Jahili Fort, a World Heritage Site in Al Ain, in Abu Dhabi.

"Architecture can be a means of joining people. It is a way to showcase commonalities between the Muslim communities that exist in all regions of the world," said Mohammed Al Asad, a member of the Award's steering committee.

"Of course there are tensions in Europe between the immigrant and host populations. This project is unique because it brings together all the different ... communities," he said.​