Aga Khan Award for Architecture: Bahrain's Shaikha Mai is added to the steering committee

She helped helm the Revitalisation of Muharraq, which shared the prize with five other sites in 2019

Bahrain's Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa. Courtesy Alwaleed Philanthropies

Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa, president of the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities, has been named as a member to the steering committee for the 2022 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

She is joined by Meisa Batayneh, principal architect and founder of maisam architects & engineers in Amman, Jordan, as well as the world-renowned British architect Sir David Chipperfield.

As a member of the committee, Shaikha Mai will help select an independent master jury which, in turn, selects the award recipients from the nominated projects.

It is also responsible for establishing the eligibility criteria for project nominations, providing thematic direction to the award, and developing plans for its long-term future.

She is the founder of the Sheikh Ebrahim Bin Mohammed Al-Khalifa Centre for Culture and Research, an NGO established in Muharraq in 2002. Since its opening, it has helped conserve and rehabilitate over 25 traditional Bahraini houses and spearheaded urban regeneration in the historic city.

In 2019, under Shaikha Mai's leadership, the Revitalisation of Muharraq, a series of restoration projects highlighting the site’s pearling history, which was named one of the six winners of the prized architecture award.

Along with Sharjah's Wasit Wetland Centre, it shared the prize with the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, the Arcadia Education Project in Bangladesh, the Alioune Diop University Teaching and Research Unit in Senegal and the Public Spaces Development Programme in Tatarstan.

The Aga Khan Award is bestowed by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which has its headquarters in Geneva and is run by Prince Shah Karim al-Husayni, the current Aga Khan IV, a nobleman, philanthropist and spiritual leader.

Started in 1977, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture honours innovations in Islamic architecture and design and is held on a three-yearly basis.

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture is one of the discipline’s top honours and brings with it a prize of $1 million.

Also on this year's steering committee are Istanbul's Emre Arolat, of Emre Arolat Architecture; Souleymane Bachir Diagne, director of the Institute of African Studies at New York's Columbia University; Nasser Rabbat, the  Aga Khan professor and director of the Aga Khan Programme for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Marina Tabassum, principal of Marina Tabassum Architects in Dhaka; and Sarah M Whiting, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

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