Reading the relationship of Ağa Han architecture awarded buildings with the ground

The concept of "locality" is a formative element, which makes the design holding a determining role as relevant to the architectural design, meaningful. "The locality" is a basic data source for architecture by means of its physical, social, cultural data. The architectural design is deemed as successful depending on its harmony with its locality. The approach towards the concept of "locality" differs before and after the Industrial Period. During traditional periods, the culture of living, activities and production of humankind is correlated with "the locality". However, the fact that the types of production broke away from the locality triggered the process of modernization fully; and, the concept of time and space almost disappeared. As part of the contemporary architecture, the architectural design is designed free from the local architecture, without giving a thought on geographical, climactic, cultural dependency. This situation gave rise to emergence of reaction among both the intelligentsia and the architects, having an awareness, in the Islamic countries. The idea that an endeavor that will restrain the behavior that turns an aspiration to the West into a fate and that will raise an awareness among the architectures will be made, was brought forward. Aga Han Awards of Architecture that have emerged on the basis of the said awareness is a prestigious award that had appeared on the basis of the awareness of local culture and local architecture, that has continued its existence until today starting from 1977. The said award is usually granted to the projects rendering the Islamic culture with success, holding a contemporary design, not turning its back on the traditional, being protective and inclusive in the Islamic countries or where the Muslim communities are many. The objective of the present thesis is to analyze the relation of the projects that had been granted Aga Han Award of Architecture with the locality and local, to identify the criteria of design as relevant to "the locality" that led the said award-winning projects to receive an award; and, to conduct the order of priority for the said criteria. Within this framework, the relation of architectural design-locality-local has been discussed primarily in the conceptual part of the thesis; together with the process of the commencement, the objective, the criteria of selection and the offering process of Aga Han Awards of Architecture, that constitutes the main material of the study, later on. Whereas, as part of the area study, because of their closeness to today's technologies and production techniques, a selection was made from among the10 items of projects constituting architectural design that were granted Aga Han Awards of Architecture in the process starting from the year 2000 until today; examination was made of the architectural design processes, the jury reports, the project documents as written and visual; the structures were evaluated from a physical spatial, and contextual angle, and the criteria of design as relevant to the locality, which had an impact on the said structures being granted an award, were identified. Then, Aga Han award-winning structures that had been selected in order to identify the order of priority of the criteria for awarding that had been determined as part of the study were evaluated in the light of the said criteria and the criteria that are the most efficient and preferential regarding the awarding offered to the said structures on the whole were identified.