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Recipients of the 2025 Aga Khan Award for Architecture are:
Bangladesh
The Global Centre for Pluralism announces today the 10 laureates for the 2025 Global Pluralism Award. These leaders are being recognised for their exceptional and courageous work to support full participation by marginalised groups in their societies, build trust and cooperation between warring parties, and create systems that foster the protection and celebration of differences around the world.
Selected from over 300 applications across 64 countries, the 2025 finalists are operating in some of the world’s most challenging contexts. From active war zones to communities facing extreme discrimination, they champion a more peaceful and equitable world and provide examples of how it is possible to make practical changes that foster pluralistic societies.
The 2025 Global Pluralism Award finalists are:
“The Global Pluralism Award seeks out the world’s most powerful examples of pluralism in action. This year, we are proud to welcome 10 new exemplary leaders into our now 50-strong community of award alumni,” said Meredith Preston McGhie, Secretary-General of the Global Centre for Pluralism. “This is more than a network; it is a dynamic and growing global community of practice with lessons for all of us. These leaders are on the front lines and provide vital lessons about what is possible around the world. Together, they prove that pluralism is not just an ideal, but a practical solution to the world’s most pressing challenges.”
Dr Marwan Muasher, Chair of the Global Pluralism Award jury, points out that the Award plays a role in building solidarity. “People who work on pluralism need to be recognised and acknowledged around the globe; the Award does a lot in raising awareness about the need for pluralism. It is important for this global community of practitioners to know about each other and their successes in different contexts.”
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LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS (Aga Khan Garden) Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects
ARCHITECTS (Diwan) AXIA Design Associates (Design Architects), Arriz + Co. (Architectural & Interior Design), and Kasian Architecture, Interior Design, and Planning (Executive Architects)
TEXT David Down
Carved out of a boggy Alberta forest outside the rural town of Devon, south of Edmonton, the Aga Khan Garden with its new pavilion, known as The Diwan, is a design revelation of exceptional grace, tranquility, spirituality and precision of execution. Masterfully balancing cultural and historical references with local topography, climate, vegetation and materials, both the garden and the building sit perfectly composed in their unexpected context. Together, they comprise the world’s northernmost Islamic-inspired garden, rooted in an ancient and distant culture, yet completely connected to their Canadian home.
Located within The University of Alberta Botanic Garden, the 4.8-hectare Aga Khan Garden was gifted to the University of Alberta in 2018 by His Highness the Aga Khan. The gift nods to Canada’s historic welcoming of Ismaili Muslims in 1972, and is part of the work of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which has created and restored important gardens around the world, including Aga Khan Park in Toronto. The Aga Khan himself speaks of gardens as a central element in Muslim culture—places where human creativity and divine majesty are fused, and our responsibility to nature and stewardship of the natural world are put into action. "
CANADA
The Aga Khan Garden is a gift to the University of Alberta from His Highness the Aga Khan.
It brings to life the principle of pluralism in a 4.8-hectare Mughal-inspired space where
traditional Islamic landscape design takes on strikingly contemporary features.
"Elements inspired by gardens from the Muslim world are interspersed with distinctively
Canadian features, from Alberta’s wild rose beds to Canadian-quarried stonework.
The Garden provides a stunning example of Islamic landscape architecture that explores
the beauty and boundaries of vegetation, light, water, geometry, symmetry, adaptation and human scale.
The serenity of nature highlights each of the design elements including secluded forest paths,
granite and limestone terraces, still pools that reflect the prairie sky and a waterfall that
tumbles over textured stone.
The Aga Khan Garden is laid out in three parts: woodland valley, central court and pond
framed by an orchard. It unfolds in rectangular terraces down to the Calla Pond.
On the highest point stands a pavilion that enjoys a vista over the Garden.
From this plaza, water emerges and runs through a stone-lined channel from one terrace level
to the next and then falls gently into Calla Pond.
At that moment, the Aga Khan Garden transitions from a structured scheme to a looser, curving,
more naturalistic design of the bustan, a fruit orchard that extends around the Calla Pond.
The Garden contains more than 25,000 trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals and wetland plants,
selected for fragrance, beauty and the ability to thrive in Alberta’s climate. Twelve water features
and fountains are sprinkled around the Garden.
Speaking at the inauguration, His Highness spoke of the place, throughout history,
of the Islamic garden in reminding us of the notion of good stewardship of the earth
and “our responsibility to honor, to protect, and to share the gifts of the natural world”.
In considering the role that such green spaces may play, His Highness spoke of the
Garden as a social space, “a place for learning, for sharing, for romance, for diplomacy,
for reflection on the destiny of the human race”."
