Outreach & Dissemination

Architecture on the Fringes, an exhibition exploring vernacular settlements across Oman, opens in Rotch Library on Friday, March 11. Originally organized by Professor Soumyen Bandyopadhyay and Martin S. Goffriller, Ph.D., the exhibition highlights the extensive documentation and research undertaken by the Centre for the Study of Architecture and Cultural Heritage of India, Arabia and the Maghreb (ArCHIAM), University of Liverpool, UK.

The exhibition is organized in conjunction with New Frontiers in Gulf Urbanism, a symposium co-sponsored by the Aga Khan Documentation Center and the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, and is curated for MIT by Sharon C. Smith, Ph.D., AKDC program head. Also coinciding with the symposium and physical exhibition, a virtual exhibition of the same name will launch on Archnet and is curated by Michael A. Toler, Ph.D, Archnet content manager.

This exhibition aims to address both the preconditions and the interactions that helped shape the distinctive nature of settlements and architecture on the edges and within the core of Oman. It aims to highlight the complex interconnections that existed between the boundaries and the core through the exchange of peoples, ideas and artifacts. The study of Omani settlements is significant not only due to its still-extant large concentration of vernacular settlements but importantly also given the long continuity of rich settlement history extending back to at least the 3rd millennium BCE