The independent Master Jury of the 16th Award Cycle (2023-2025) has announced the winners for the 2025 Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA).
Based on the on-site reviews of the shortlisted projects that were announced in June 2025, the jury selected seven projects. The recipients through these projects explore architecture’s capacity to address contemporary challenges through community resilience, while honouring cultural heritage. The winners will share the award of $1 million, one of the largest in architecture.
This 16th cycle’s prize-giving ceremony will be held at the Toktogul Satylganov Kyrgyz National Philharmonic in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, on 15 September. The Award will not only reward architects, but also municipalities, builders, clients, master artisans and engineers who have played important roles in the projects.
Recipients of the 2025 Aga Khan Award for Architecture
BANGLADESH
Khudi Bari
Location: Various locations, Bangladesh
Client: Local population
Architect: Marina Tabassum Architects, Dhaka
Status: Ongoing
Khudi Bari is a simple space frame built with bamboo and steel connectors that responds to the rise of climate-driven displacement in Bangladesh. The affordable, modular structural system can be rapidly disassembled and reassembled by three people using simple tools.
The Khudi Bari is resilient, with its rigid frame able to withstand lateral wind and water pressure. Nevertheless, the lightweight structure requires only a shallow foundation and an anchor to the ground. The roofs are corrugated metal sheets for the ease of transport and maintenance. The façades can be made from any material sourced locally, and the Khudi Bari’s architectural design echoes vernacular houses in the region.
It is designed with two levels: the lower offers a social and private space, and the upper is used for sleeping and can double as a flood shelter. Khudi Bari units have been deployed in floods and thunderstorms.
Marina Tabassum Architects has worked with communities to share construction knowledge and scaled up the structure, using it to build aggregation centres for women farmers and community centres for women in Rohingya refugee camps.
(Source: Jury Citations)
CHINA
West Wusutu Village Community Centre
Location: Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China
Client: West Wusutu Village Community
Architect: Inner Mongolian Grand Architecture Design Co. Ltd / Zhang Pengju
Status: Completed (2023)
The community centre is built from reclaimed bricks that provide social and cultural spaces for residents and artists, while addressing the cultural needs of the local multi-ethnic community, including Hui Muslims. The Jury noted that the project generates a valuable shared and inclusive communal microcosm within a rural human macrocosm.
The multifunctional community centre serves a rural village with a rich historical and cultural context. It has three primary functions: providing gathering spaces for elderly residents, children, and returning young villagers; creating exhibition and social spaces for artists; and addressing the religious needs of the Hui Muslim community, who are far from the main mosque.
(Source: Jury Citations)
EGYPT
Revitalisation of Historic Esna
Location: Esna, Egypt
Client: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Luxor Governorate, USAID/Egypt
Architect: Takween Integrated Community Development / Kareem Ibrahim, Cairo
Status: Ongoing
This is a project that addresses cultural tourism challenges through physical interventions, socioeconomic initiatives and innovative urban strategies, transforming a neglected site into a prospering historic city. The Jury acknowledged the ways the project is stimulating a historic urban metabolism to cope with the contemporary challenge of improving human conditions.
Physical works include the conservation and adaptive reuse of the 18th-century Wakalat al-Geddawi, upgrades to the Qisariyya Market and Bazaar Street, restoration of the 19th-century Royal Guesthouse, and rehabilitation of 15 architecturally significant sites. Sustainable methods utilised local materials like mud-bricks and wood, recycled extensively, and revived traditional techniques.
Socioeconomic efforts included capacity building of over 430 local participants and 18 SMEs in business skills, and documenting cultural and architectural heritage. The establishment of women-led enterprises – Women’s Kitchen and the Women-led Wood Workshop – promoted gender inclusion. Tourism initiatives strongly increased visitor numbers, and local businesses received infrastructural and financial support.
(Source: Jury Citations)
IRAN
Majara Residence and Community Redevelopment
Location: Hormuz, Iran
Client: Ehsan Rasoulof and Ali Rezvani, Tehran
Architect: ZAV Architects / Mohamadreza Ghodousi
Status: Completed (2021)
The Majara Complex and Community Redevelopment project is a colourful complex whose domes reflect the rainbow island’s ochre-rich soils, providing sustainable accommodations for tourists who visit the unique landscape of Hormuz Island. The Jury described the project as a vibrant archipelago of varying programmes that serve to incrementally build an alternative tourism economy.
Inspired by the soil’s colours and particle sizes, its 200 varying-sized domes – echoing vernacular water-storage structure forms – are clustered organically. The Typeless (badban) Community Space, for monitoring and managing visitors’ presence to avoid negative impacts, contains flexible modular spaces under a canopy roof.
(Source: Jury Citations)
Jahad Metro Plaza
Location: Tehran, Iran
Client: Municipality of Tehran
Architect: KA Architecture Studio / Mohammad Khavarian
Status: Completed (2023)
Jahad Metro Plaza, a once dilapidated station, was transformed into a vibrant urban node for pedestrians. The Jury highlighted the use of local handmade brick as strengthening the connection with Iran’s rich architectural heritage, while its warm, subtle texture emphasises the station’s status as a new urban monument.
A project initiated by a group of urban specialists and the previous municipal administration is seeking to foster a ‘pedestrian-oriented city’ by activating underutilised or low-quality spaces – from parks to underpasses – to become vibrant urban nodes.
(Source: Jury Citations)
PAKISTAN
Vision Pakistan
Location: Islamabad, Pakistan
Client: Rushda Tariq Qureshi
Architect: DB Studios / Mohammad Saifullah Siddiqui
Status: Completed (2023)
The Vision Pakistan is a multistorey facility boasting joyful facades inspired by Pakistani and Arab craft, while housing a charity that aims to empower disadvantaged youth through vocational training. The Jury noted that the building not only contains a new type of education, but is full of light, spatially interesting and economically efficient.
Their geometric patterns are inspired by Pakistani and Arab crafts and 1960s Islamabad architecture, and their colours echo those used in the neighbourhood’s vernacular culture to evoke positivity.
(Source: Jury Citations)
PALESTINE
Wonder Cabinet
Location: Bethlehem, Palestine
Client: Wonder Cabinet
Architect: AAU Anastas
Status: Completed (2023)
Wonder Cabinet is a multipurpose, non-profit exhibition and production space built with the input of local artisans and contractors, to become a key hub for craft, design, innovation and learning. The Jury found that the building provides a model for an architecture of connection, rooted in contemporary expressions of national identity, and asserts the importance of cultural production as a means of resistance.
Structured around three programmes – Research and Production, Education and Community and the Public Programme – it aims to provide workspaces for Palestinian artists and engineers, designers and producers alike and to bring to life a regional hub for creativity and artisanal learning. In line with this mission, local artisans were engaged in the steel works and interior design of the building, including the lighting fixtures.
(Source: Jury Citations)
About Aga Khan Awards for Architecture
AKAA is a programme of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN). Founded and guided by His Late Highness Karim Aga Khan IV, AKDN works in 30 countries to improve the quality of life and to create opportunities for people of all faiths and origins.
The 2025 cycle represents the first since the award’s founder, Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, the Aga Khan IV, passed away in February at 88 years old, with the program now chaired by his son, Prince Rahim Aga Khan V. The award, established in 1977 and presented triennially, continues its mission to honor designs that address practical needs and cultural aspirations of communities with significant Muslim presence.
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture is granted every three years for projects that raise the bar for excellence in design, planning, historic preservation, and landscape architecture. The Award aims to recognise and promote architecture that successfully meets the needs and ambitions of society where Muslims are a larger presence.
