Aga Khan Museum Opens In Toronto
With faceted white walls that gleam in the afternoon sun and strange crystalline domes poking up above the trees, the new $300 million Aga Khan Museum and Ismaili Centre are startling additions to a stretch of suburban Toronto, at the roaring junction of two six-lane expressways. The museum is a monolithic shed, its canted walls giving it the look of a gigantic packing box that has been flipped open, with sharply chiselled skylights sliced into its crisp limestone skin. The project is a particularly unusual arrival to Toronto’s Don Valley, a green “edgeland†north-east of the city, for being the work of two of Asia’s greatest living architects. The 86-year-old Japanese Pritzker winner, Fumihiko Maki, was responsible for the museum, while the Ismaili Centre was designed by the 84-year-old titan of Indian modernism, Charles Correa. Their patron is equally esteemed: the Aga Khan, Prince Shah Karim Al Husseini (or “K†to his friends), is the 49th hereditary imam of the estimated 15 million Nizari Ismaili Muslims – a branch of Islam that reached its peak during the Fatimid empire – whose followers believe him to be a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad. Among the beer stores and office parks, something sacred has landed.
