Images: Imara (Wynford Drive) Ltd.

Fumihiko Maki’s Aga Khan Museum of Islamic Art and Charles Correa’s Ismaili Centre are intended as places of “civic encounters” with other communities, yet are set in a formal garden miles from Toronto’s other cultural institutions. Can Maki’s beautiful fortress and its refined grounds lure visitors all the same?

This article was first published in Icon’s October 2014 issue: Museums, under the headline “Act of faith”. Buy back issues or subscribe to the magazine for more like this

Two new buildings poke out of Toronto’s leafy Don Valley, about13km north-east of downtown. If you drive by at speed, the view lasts a few seconds. The one that looks like a moon fort is Fumihiko Maki’s Aga Khan Museum of Islamic Art, and the other one is Charles Correa’s Ismaili Centre. Connecting them are gardens and a park by Vladimir Djurovic. Toronto’s Moriyama & Teshima Architects were the local architects.

Even from the highway the scene hums with quality and expense.
The project was built for about 300 million Canadian dollars (£164million) by the Aga Khan Development Network to encourage dialogue between Muslims and other communities, and as a centre for Ismailis. Bounded by two major roads and by one of Toronto’s busiest highways, the eastern part of the site was first purchased by the Ismaili community in 1996 for a jamat khana (meeting place and prayer hall).

The museum is clad in white granite with a metal roof

Correa won the competition and construction drawings were underway when the adjacent property became available. The new land already included John Parkin’s Bata Shoes headquarters, a white rectangle from 1965 that floated on pilotis, like a Mediterranean hotel. Sasaki and Associates added the museum in its 2002masterplan, and Maki further developed it in 2005 with a formal Persian garden. The Bata building was demolished in 2007 after a repurposing study and despite local protests.

“There wasn’t a museum dedicated to the different civilisations of Islam,” explains my guide, Azim Alibhai, and nowhere to “see something from Spain juxtaposed with something from China”. Building the museum in Canada was a natural choice because “Canada is a model for pluralism”.....Continue Reading

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