Driehaus Prize goes to Egyptian architect Abdel-Wahed El-Wakil

On behalf of the Institute's staff, board, Fellows, and members nationwide, I salute the 2009 winners of the Richard H. Driehaus and Henry Hope Reed Prizes respectively as administered and announced today by the School of Architecture at Notre Dame.  The press release form the School summarizes it best of all and I am pleased therefore to post it here along with exemplary illustrations of the designs of Driehaus winner, Abdelwahed El-Wakil. It is a thrilling choice and reveals by fortuitous happenstance the ICA&CA's  essential dedication  to the classical tradition in its broadest and most ecumenical embrace: The continuing interpretation of and extrapolation from traditional expression as globally manifest over time and in direct relation to regional needs, diverse cultural traditions and shifting material possibilities. At this time of global change and challenge it is spot on.

 

Appreciation above all goes to Institute trustee Richard Driehaus,  whose generosity and foresight spawn this great recognition each year, as well as juror and board member, Adele Chatfield Taylor, and  juror and ICA&CA Advisor Notre Dame School of Architecture Dean, Michael Lykoudis, under whose watch this annual program now enters its sixth year. The prizes' appropriate global reach is now irrefutable.  I am honored to have this chance to spread the news.

American Academy in Rome President, Adele Chatfield-Taylor, writes " It was wonderful in my service as a Driehaus and Reed Prize juror to be able to recognize El-Wakil as a great traditional architect. He is not yet well known in the West, but he uses ancient materials and forms often in achieving a purity and perfection of design. May the recognition afforded by the Driehaus Prize introduce him to a wider audience and thereby enrich a global conversation about contemporary architecture in the true fullness of its best expression today. Likewise the preservation and scholarship example of Buenos Aires-based Fabio Grementieri can inspire far and wide as all of us agreed in our deliberations. "

I first became aware of El-Wakil in 1989, when he won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in particular for "the contemporary use of traditional language."  It is lamentable how very little attention the Aga Khan Award for Architecture winners receive in America each year, as opposed, for example, to the great attention paid to those star American and European architects selected in 2008 by Abu Dhabi to build its planned Saadiyat Island Cultural District (including Frank Gehry's second Guggenheim Foundation satellite museum ). It is as if there were no skilled parishioners of regional distinction able to so conceive in graceful concert with several centuries of contemporary exploration, combining an ever-shifting local vernacular with the ever-growing forces of international discourse and trade--as if it were only possible to import global brand names from afar as in colonies past. As soon as the exchange of ideas and possible solutions is not so utterly unilateral, the world of ideas will be far better served.

With this cultural oversight in mind, it seems especially appropriate that at long last there is external celebration of precisely this great reservoir of contemporary classical Islamic design achievement as so exquisitely embodied by El-Wakil.

 

Paul Gunther

November 10, 2008

Here is a gallery of photos of El-Wakil’s work. These pictures were taken by El-Wakil and his associates. He has given us permission to distribute them. If you need to provide a credit, you can say “courtesy of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture.”

Al-Sulaiman Palace, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Corniche Mosque, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Qiblatain Mosque, Medina, Saudi Arabia

Comments

[LINDA DAVIES]

I worked for El Wakil after I left college in 1981,when he had an office in Ashford in Kent. It is good to see him doing so well and that his use of the local skilled craftsmen is so well appreciated.