Archnet

Archnet is an open digital project on Islamic architecture and the built environment of Muslim societies. It was conceived in 1998 by Aga Khan IV, MIT's president Charles Vest and William Mitchell, dean of its School of Architecture and Planning, and was officially launched on 27 September 2002. ¹

The article traces the idea to a 1983 speech by the Aga Khan in Istanbul on the need of architects and students in the Muslim world for resources they could reach, and says it was meant as a global community joining architects, planners, historians and students. ¹

The site holds records of buildings and sites, images, drawings and texts, and the archives of architects including Michel Ecochard, Hassan Fathy and Rifat Chadirji; from March 2007 it published the International Journal of Architectural Research (IJAR). ¹

Since 2011 it has been run by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture with the Aga Khan Documentation Center at the MIT Libraries, and in January 2014 it was relaunched open, without logins. ¹

The site is at archnet.org, and it has the Wikidata item Q1995253. ¹

• English Wikipedia, "ArchNet", revision 1373882875. ¹