About this book
Every three years the Aga Khan Award for Architecture takes stock of what building can do for the communities it serves. Optimism and Architecture gathers the awarded and shortlisted projects of the 2025 cycle and asks a deceptively simple question: what does hope look like when it is built? Edited by Lesley Lokko and Cristina Steingräber, the volume argues that optimism is not naivety but a design method—a willingness to treat tradition as a live resource, to touch the ground lightly, and to make room for people who are rarely designed for.
Unpublished material opens up the Award's famously rigorous jury and review process, giving readers a rare view of how these judgements are actually reached.
Key features
- Complete coverage of the awarded and shortlisted projects of the 2025 Award cycle
- Previously unpublished jury and review material
- Essays and conversations placing each project in its social and political context
- Contributions from Azra Akšamija, Lucia Allais, David Basulto, Farrokh Derakhshani, Yvonne Farrell, Hanif Kara, Yacouba Konaté, Raafat Majzoub and Deen Sharp
What you'll discover
- How architecture can reinvigorate tradition through careful innovation rather than pastiche
- The way local building practices connect to global architectural conversations
- Climate-responsive strategies drawn from projects across the Award's geography
- Architecture read as cultural practice—shaping public life, not just enclosing it
About the editors
Lesley Lokko is an architect, academic and novelist, founder of the African Futures Institute in Accra and recipient of the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 2024. She curated the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Cristina Steingräber is the managing director of ArchiTangle and has edited architectural publications across the practice's full range.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Dimensions: 172 × 248 mm
- Pages: 304
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783966800402
- Publisher: ArchiTangle
- Publication date: 16 September 2025
Perfect for
Architects and students working on climate-responsive and community-led projects, readers following the Aga Khan Award, and anyone interested in contemporary architecture beyond the usual European and North American canon.