Prince Karim, who was born in Geneva in 1936, came into the hereditary role of spiritual leader of the global Ismaili Muslim community in 1957 after the death of his grandfather. Over a 60-plus-year rule, he embraced his responsibility, as he said in 2006, to “do all within his means to improve the quality, and security, of the daily lives” of Ismailis and burnished a legacy of philanthropy focused on health care, education, and culture—and that fused faith with architecture.

After becoming the Aga Khan, he surveyed the Islamic world and “felt that we had lost our cultural identity in the built environment, our pluralism,” he said in a 2005 interview. He responded by founding the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), which was established in 1988 and has worked with leading architects to build projects around the world. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture, part of the AKDN, ensures the preservation of historic buildings in countries with a strong Ismaili heritage, like Morocco, Egypt, India, and Pakistan. He established the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to “make sure that the people who are designing understand the societies for which they are working.” In 2014, the Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Center in Toronto, designed by Pritzker Prize–winner Fumihiko Maki, opened as a center for “intercultural dialogue and understanding through the arts” that also houses more than 1,200 pieces of Muslim culture, from manuscripts to paintings to textiles, spanning the 9th to 21st centuries.

Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Center in Toronto. Photo by Gary Otte, courtesy AKDN

But it was the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA) that represented his most significant response. Established in 1977, the award was created, in part, to honor and raise awareness of the Islamic world’s architectural heritage. It’s presented every three years to “projects that set new standards of excellence in architecture, planning practices, historic preservation, and landscape architecture,” while seeking “to identify and encourage building concepts that successfully address the needs and aspirations of societies across the world, in which Muslims have a significant presence.”

“The award was designed from the start not only to honor exceptional achievement, but also to pose fundamental questions,” the Aga Khan said in 2013. “How could Islamic architecture embrace more fully the values of cultural continuity while also addressing the needs and aspirations of rapidly changing societies? How could we mirror more responsively the diversity of human experience and the differences in local environments? How could we honor inherited traditions while also engaging with new social perplexities?”

The AKAA was last awarded in 2022 to six projects, including Rivzi Hassan, Khwaja Fatmi, and Saad Ben Mostafa's Rohingya Refugee Response in Bangladesh; andramatin's Banyuwangi International Airport in Indonesia; and the renovation of the Niemeyer Guest House in Tripoli, Lebanon. Recent past winners include Heneghan Peng's Palestinian Museum in Birzeit (2019), Zaha Hadid Architects' Issam Fares Institute in Beirut (2016), and the rehabilitation of Tabriz Bazaar, a 10th century World Heritage site in Azerbaijan (2013).

While the Aga Khan’s death resonated profoundly with the 15 million Ismailis around the world who looked to his spiritual guidance, members of the architecture community similarly mourned the loss of a guiding force.

“It is impossible to overestimate the Aga Khan’s impact as a major force for good, especially in developing countries and regions,” wrote Hashim Sarkis, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT. “It was also stunning how much of an architect he was, in his passion for buildings, in his spatial thinking and synthetic approach to problems…but also how he viewed architecture as transformative of our lives and societies.”

Farshid Moussavi, who designed the Ismaili Center in Houston, took to Instagram to eulogize “a visionary leader who dedicated his life to improving the quality of life for individuals and communities worldwide—regardless of origin, faith, or gender. The lessons I have learned from him are immeasurable. I take solace in knowing that his legacy will continue to inspire and guide us for generations to come.”

Moriyama Teshima Architects, which worked with the Aga Khan on Ottawa’s Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat and the museum and center in Toronto, remembered in a post on LinkedIn his “belief in architecture’s transformative power to foster pluralism, understanding, and spiritual reflection. His vision challenged us to think beyond physical structures, reminding us that architecture has the potential to be a bridge between communities, a symbol of shared humanity, and a beacon of hope.”