BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has just launched ArchNet, a new online resource for the study of Islamic architecture, planning and landscape design sponsored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. The ceremony took place at MIT on September 27, 2002, and it was presided over by his Highness the Aga Khan, Charles M. Vest, President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Lawrence H. Summers, President of Harvard University. The elaborate site, the world’s largest on-line resource on architecture, urbanism and landscape design related to the Muslim world, offers free access to more than 600,000 images plus academic papers, articles and other documentation. ArchNet also allows the establishment of "workspaces" that allow collaborative research, and features job listings, a digital calendar of events and a directory of individual ArchNet members and participating institutions. The Aga Khan, 65, the hereditary spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims, is a Harvard grad in Islamic history.

After three years in development, this website designed to encourage informed exchanges is officially ready for use. According to its original design, users travel from image collections of monuments in the Islamic world, through rich selections of Aga Khan Trust for Culture projects, including Aga Khan Award winners, and to publications related to these topics. Further strengthened by institutional partners’, groups’ and individuals’ contributions through their workspaces, ArchNet’s archive of images and texts evolves in tandem with its active members who work all over the globe. With these elements in place, ArchNet culminates as a dynamic community of people as seen in the discussion forum and in studios like the Correa Charrette, progressing towards the betterment of our built environment through provocative discourse and proactive exchange.