Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, the Aga Khan IV, died on February 4 in Lisbon, Portugal at age 88. News of his passing was confirmed Aga Khan Development Networks X channel.As founder and chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), the Aga Khan IV was one of architectures greatest patrons. The network has commissioned projects all over the world by renowned architects, including the United States first Ismaili Center by Farshid Moussavi Architecture, which is near completion in Houston.The Aga Khan IV founded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1977. That award has since recognized and documented more than 9,000 projects around the globe. The late Prince Karim Al-Hussaini was born in 1936 in Geneva, Switzerland. He later studied Islamic history at Harvard. He became the 49th Imam of Nizari Ismaili Muslims in 1957 after his grandfather decided to skip a generation, and bestow thetitle upon his then 20-year-old grandson.Two decades later, the Aga Khan IV started the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, which runs in three-year cycles. It started out recognizing projects of cultural and historic significant for the Ismaili community, which touches South Asia, East Africa, and the Middle East; but today it awards projects from all over.The Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an AKDN subsidiary, has overseen the preservation of historic buildings and cities in Morocco, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Tajikistan, India, Pakistan, and many more countries with a strong Ismaili presence.The Aga Khan Programs for Islamic Architecture (AKPIA) at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were launched in 1979. The courses, lectures, and conferences in the program concentrate on ideas and concepts related to Islamic architectureand urbanism. The purpose that drove The Aga Khan IV was his mission to define Islamic architecture, although His Highness admitted in 1980 that there is no single or unifying definition of the practice.Among the Aga Khan Award for Architectures early winners were Egyptian architect and planner Hassan Fathy in 1980, Charles Correa in 1998, Zaha Hadid and Marina Tabassum in 2016, and many others.In 2001, speaking from Aleppo, Syria, at the Award presentation ceremony of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Aga Khan IV said the goal of the award program was to create an intellectual spacesomething we might think of as a beautiful bustan in which there would be no possibility of suffocation from the dying weeds of dogma, whether professional or ideological; where the flowers of articulation and challenging ideas could grow without restraint; where the new plants of creativity and risk-taking could blossom in the full light of day [] The Aga Khan IV continued: where beauty would be seen in the articulation of difference and for seeking diverse solutions in the form of plants of different sizes, shapes, textures and colors, presented in new configurations and arrangements; a bustan whose glory would stem from the value and legitimacy of the pluralism of the infinite manifestations of culture in the human community.The Aga Khan Museum opened to the public in 2014. That building was designed by Fumihiko Maki, who also passed recently, and is sited in Toronto.In 2020, The Aga Khan Award for Architecture recognized those who contributed to the revitalization of Muharraq, Bahrain.The Aga Khan IV spent the last years of his life in Portugal. He is survived by his sons, daughter, and grandchildren. With his passing, Prince Rahim Al-Hussaini Aga Khan V was named the 50th hereditary Imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims.