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Architectural competitions have become a major way of commissioning buildings, especially for corporate and government structures. They belong to a practice that dates back to ancient Greece. This editorial essay ponders some of the critical issues raised by the two major types - project competitions and ideas competitions through representative case studies of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the recent competition for master plan and buildings for the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science. The notions discussed are based on the author's personal experiences over four decades, and the roles played by the major players involved in the process - the client or sponsor, the competition organizers, the designers/architects, and the architectural juries. The article ends with a consideration of why architectural competitions are valuable in the lessons they offer and the discourses they raise, and their significance for architects and architecture more broadly.

Architect-designed houses for the richer segments of society in the Islamic world are often seen as indulgent excursions into personal expression, and hence are also often given short shrift in academic discourse. Although these houses are the result of individual tastes of a certain group of people - the elite - they are also indicators of collective aspirations and can be models for analysing the development of new housing typologies. By digging into the traditional memory of cities and architectural designs of single residences one can learn about the possibility for high-density living and also produce models of housing not only for the wealthy but also for the poor. The design and image of houses are discussed here through a number of built examples. Despite being located in different regions and areas of Muslim habitation, these houses indicate attempts to synthesize 'traditional' and 'modern' and have produced a new typology that could serve as a paradigm for a way forward for the production of new housing.

If architecture is an expression of culture, its manifestations tell us something about ourselves, our aspirations, and our desires. But nothing is ever straightforward. Of course, not all architecture was nor is rooted to the land - traditionally some of it expressed the values of the ruling class, be it the grand mosques as expressions of piety or the palaces or corporate office buildings as symbols of power. Iconic images and visual extravagances have always been part of the landscape, from the Taj Mahal to Le Corbusier's Chapel at Ronchamp to Gehry's attention-seeking Bilbao Guggenheim Museum. Iconic building has always been part of the visual landscape of the city. And many recent global developments have been enabled and abetted by the consumerist 'transnational capitalist class' (TCC). In this process, developers and architects have played a significant role in visualizing the new buildings and cities that serve the TCC. One could argue that in the era of globalization, the relationship between urban economy and urban design seems to be reversed. Urban design has undertaken an enhanced new role as a means of economic development and it is the search for architectural icons that drives the process of architectural design in globalizing cities. The focus on image has reached great heights, abetted by innovations in technology. What has come to be known as the 'Dubai Effect' became prevalent at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the need to attract and to create a brand. Architectural publications pander to the new slickness in presenting unusual and visually arresting buildings regardless of their suitability. These increasingly attention-grabbing buildings are forming our perception of the built environment in a cacophony of visual expressions, which makes one wonder in what direction architectural reform is heading.

Architectural historic preservation has been used as a means to express or represent national, Islamic and even ethnic identity, and often this is linked to tourism or used to serve political ends, particularly in nation building. This article investigates agency and utility in the conservation and restoration of religious built environments in different societies in the Islamic world and its meaning to these societies today. Conservation should be interpreted more broadly than the physical continuity of historic structures; it should also enable the continuity of non-material aspects of culture.

The correlation between belief in the stewardship of the earth and vernacular architecture yields a sensitivity to nature and to the spirituality of place in building construction. Patterns in nature are thus reflected in the organic forms of buildings and in various urban interventions. The notion of stewardship is also deeply embed in the teachings of Islam and other religions and cultural systems. Past architecture exhibits knowledge about the relationship and balance between the built and natural environment (A Place of Being). The scientific revolution, the industrial revolution and specialization seemed to bring with them the separation of beauty and utility and also encouraged an aggressive attitude toward the exploitation of nature. In the larger project of modernity 'progress and development' deepened the rupture between the built and natural realms (A Place of Forgetting). In the past two decades or so, environmental awareness and economic imperatives have begun to generate programs that have resulted in built works that attempt to heal the scars in the landscape and to be more sensitive to place (A Place of Remembering). Today, some architectural projects, based on ethical concerns, are beginning to reconnect contemporary architectural projects to the wisdom of the past in order to produce solutions for a sustainable built environment (A New Place of Being), and perhaps a new vernacular built environment.

This article presents a series of ideas, a mosaic if you will, about the ways in which cultural tourism design conceives and presents places and how these are received and experienced. Starting with how individuals confront culture, where forms of tourism combine religious and social aspects, it considers the impact of those great contemporary equalizers - television and the internet - on the mechanisms through which we interpret the places we visit. Part of this mix entails the experience of place and the narratives presented by the native cultures to the visitor through the expression of (authentic?) places and architectures. These are illustrated by the manifestation of different types of hotels and resorts within four main rubrics: the vernacular resort evoking a sense of place; efficient place of business within the construct of modernism; the supra-real images of twenty-first century globalization; and the reference to the past through historic built environments. This essay outlines a chain of events in touristic architecture: from that of the design and production, its transmission and impact, to the interpretation of the object by architects and writers; and its impact on the receivers - the tourist being amongst them. Aided (or confused) by the new media, tourist architecture at its worst can be an excuse for the indulgence in neo-vernacular kitsch and the formulaic, but at its best may be viewed as aiding a process of self-definition - an exploration of cultural identity.

The multiple new readings of globalization illuminate the global and local pressures upon the city and its particular forms of spatial organization and various architectures. Recent investigations and approaches thus reveal a revised image for the city based on innovative visions and values. The various aspects of these new developments in scholarship are complex and analysed here under six rubrics - synthetic cities and new urban forms; the Central Business District (CBD) as a generator of growth; skyscrapers as symbols of the new modernity; global architecture appropriated into the local; tourism; historic preservation and the vernacular; and, housing environments for the poor. By carefully considering the overlapping emphases of these rubrics, this editorial indicates a new paradigm within which to consider urbanism.

(2010). Developing Discourses on Architecture. Journal of Architectural Education: Vol. 63, No. 2, pp. 82-84.

"Architectural Education: Learning from Developing Countries." Journal of Architectural Education, 40(2), pp. 31–32 Additional informationNotes on contributorsHasan-Uddin KhanHasan-Uddin Khan is Editor-in-Chief of MIMAR magazine