Last week, the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture short-listed 19 projects across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa for its 2025 honors. They range from a refurbished boutique hotel to microlibraries as small as 107 square feet.
The selected structures weave together long-standing cultural and design traditions with current-day adaptations for climate change.
Architects in the world’s more populous and poorer regions are recognizing and revaluing local skills and resources. They’re reducing construction’s carbon footprint by eschewing glass, steel, and cement. They’re making inventive use of bamboo, mud bricks, and even recycled plastic ice-cream buckets. They’re keeping things cool with traditional ventilation and heat-reduction techniques that are electricity-free.
Such innovations can protect lives and livelihoods against higher temperatures, droughts, and flooding. Case in point: the khudi bari (small house) designed by Marina Tabassum of Bangladesh. The simple structure on bamboo stilts can be easily taken down and put back together in a safer location. Naming Ms. Tabassum as one of its 100 most influential people of 2024, Time magazine noted that she “prioritizes local cultures and values, as well as the perils faced by our shared planet.”
Indonesia’s ambitious microlibraries project does this, too. It aims to get more children reading and provides a refuge from urban noise and heat. Passive climate design offers shade, rain protection, and cross breezes. Giant swings and rooftop gardens add touches of whimsy. And by involving local stakeholders in decisions about site and design, the microlibraries give communities an interest in continued use and care of these spaces.
The Pritzker Architecture Prize – the Nobel of architecture – recognized Francis Kéré in 2022 for applying a similar approach in “lands where resources are fragile and fellowship is vital.” More than 20 years ago, Mr. Kéré designed a primary school in his home village in Burkina Faso to function in extreme heat and without lighting. Enrollment increased fivefold; teacher housing and a library followed. Since then, he has done designs worldwide.
This emerging architectural ethos isn’t only about building with less or making do with what’s available. It’s also about reclaiming Indigenous knowledge, once considered retrograde. Even when modest materials are used, Mr. Kéré believes, “Everyone deserves quality … [and] comfort.” The results, his Pritzker citation noted, embody community and compassion and are “a source of … lasting happiness and joy.”
