This collection contains lectures from the open online course Engaging Communities: Works of the Built Environment and Their Users. The lectures explore various aspects of the relationships that exist and evolve between built works and the people they affect. Through the lens of Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) recipient projects it focuses on both communities that existed before project were started, as well as those that come into being either during project planning or because the built structures facilitate their formation.
The course defines the concept of community and explores the wide range of factors around which they coalesce such as a shared heritage and history, education, economic activities, lineage, and other social bonds. It proceeds to investigate how physical interventions in the places people live, work, or congregate can help in the development, preservation, and enhancement of communities. Projects in fields ranging from architecture and landscape design to urban planning and infrastructure development are considered. Lectures also address the impact of projects intended to help communities made fragile by challenges such as forced displacement or poverty.
This is the fourth Massive Open Online Course produced by Edraak focusing on Aga Khan Award for Architecture winning projects and available on Archnet. The other three are: The Architecture of the Mosque: Historical Roots and Modern Influences, Enhancing the Quality of Urban Life: Fifteen Winning Projects of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and Client and Designers: Models of Patronage in the Built Environment.
Presented by Mohammad al-Asad, featured on the learning platform Edraak, and sponsored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture Education Programme.
Contents (linked to the first of each video on each topic):