Wafai Architecture and Fragomeli+partners, two architecture practices based in Torino, Italy have imagined an Islamic cultural center in the Piedmont area. The project features a mosque and a center for cultural and social activities, a space that promotes constructive dialogues.
Safdie Architects’ entry for the Abrahamic Family House competition located in the Saadiyat Island Cultural District, in Abu Dhabi, brings together a mosque, a synagogue, and a church within a shared public park.
Adjaye Associates have been selected as the winners of The Abrahamic Family House competition, in Abu Dhabi. The landmark project, on Saadiyat Island, is a space where 3 religions will come together with the implementation of a mosque, a synagogue, and a church.
In all religions, prayer halls and religious buildings aim to separate the visitor from the chaos of daily life and provide serenity and peace, even for the brief moment in time when visitors are performing their prayers. In the Turkish city of Şanlıurfa, BeOffice Architects designed a circular, unbound mosque with a focus on nature, tranquility, and accessibility.
Islam, other than describing a religious belief, is a word that identifies a unique type of architecture that dates back thousands of years. It has been formed by a civilization that transformed the qualities of this belief into visible and tangible material, building structures with a striking focus on details and experiences within enclosed spaces.
Islamic architecture is an architecture that does not change its form easily. In fact, its principles have been more or less the same since thousands of years ago, with minor changes based on functional adaptations. To this day, hundreds of buildings still stand as a representation of the history of Islamic architecture and are still used just as they have been in the past.
War, however, has no religion or cultural nostalgia, and even the holiest, most historically-significant sites are threatened with complete destruction. The Great Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo, originally built by the first imperial Islamic dynasty and currently situated within a UNESCO World Heritage Site, stood yet again as a battlefield during the recent Syrian War, but this time, lost its most significant and resilient element, an 11th-century Seljuk Minaret.
Saffar Studio has released details of their proposed Golshahr Mosque and Plaza in Alborz, Iran. Inspired by a dialogue between context and function, the scheme is driven by a desire to increase sociability and the interactions between people in a sustainable platform.
Persian architecture studio Fundamental Approach Architects have won first prize in the Golshahr Mosque and Plaza National Design Competition in Iran, proposing an atypical mosque design for the city of Karaj.
The winning proposal bypasses traditional mosque designs, blurring the lines between the contemporary structure, the city, and the surrounding landscape.
While French firefighters were putting out the destructive blaze at the Notre Dame Cathedral, another holistic site was also up in flames. Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is among the holiest sites in Islam and was built almost 1,300 years ago, was struck by blaze while the monumental Catholic Church was also devastated with fire.
The fire is said to have started in the Al-Marwani Prayer Hall - also known as Solomon's Stables - part of the same compound as Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Fortunately, firemen of the Islamic Waqf department of the city were able to control the fire before any harm was done to the individuals or the other prayer halls. While the cause remains unknown, sources claim that the fire could have been ignited accidentally by children who were near the prayer hall at the time.
Mumbai-based NUDES architecture office have revealed a new design called "Mosque of Light" as their entry in the Dubai Creek Harbor competition. The project was designed as a play in light with a multi-layered geometrical form to filter daylight softly into the prayer hall. The mosque explores the combination of light and built form around a spiritual experience.
Constructing places of worship has always been an intricate practice, managing to detach the human, and release the boundary between body, mind, and spirit. Holy presence has been crucial in designing and constructing sacred places, which is why almost all religious building possessed similar characteristics: grandiosity, monolithic material, natural elements, and a plan that compliments an individual’s circulation through the space. Contemporary religious structures, however, found a way to adapt to the evolution of architecture. Unlike the Gothic or Baroque periods, modern-day architecture does not have a dominant identity. It is, in fact, a combination of postmodernism, futurism, minimalism, and everything in between. Architects have found a way to transform these exclusive, religion-devoted places into structures of spirituality, manifestation, and fascination.
Here is a selection of contemporary religious buildings that prove once again that architects are breaking all boundaries of creativity.
Nora Mosque and Community Center from EAA Emre Arolat Architecture on Vimeo.
Emre Arolat Architecture has unveiled their design for the Nora Mosque and Community Center in Ajman in the United Arab Emirates. The 10,000 square meter site located just north of Dubai, is located near a massive high rise residence block. However, it creates its own unique ambiance and spatial setting with a composition of shell-like platforms that spring from the earth.
The Dubai-based firm, X-Architects, have found inspiration in the cultural and architectural heritage of Islam for their new design. The Revelation Mosque, a +2500 square meter project, aims to create a new "heart of the neighborhood" in Abu Dhabi, UAE. In creating a generous urban void among a towering context, the proposal offers an immersive escape from everyday life, where the public (regardless of religion) can gather, communicate, and interact with one another.
AL_A has won a competition to design a new mosque within the Foster + Partner-designed World Trade Center complex in Abu Dhabi. The 2000-square-meter project, envisioned as a "pathway to serenity" rather than a single building, leads visitors on a journey through an informal park of palm trees that slowly align with the mosque's shifted grid as users approach the Prayer Hall. Once inside, visitors are facing towards Mecca.
"The mosque is envisaged as a piece of the city, one that reflects the journey from the temporal to the spiritual," said AL_A director Ho-Yin Ng. "The mosque and the garden become one, with the trees and the columns forming an informal vertical landscape and allowing Friday prayers to spill outside."
London based Mossessian Architecture, in collaboration with Paris based exhibition architects Studio Adeline Rispal, has won a competition to design a museum of Islamic faith in the city of Mecca.
The Makkah Museum will be located seven kilometers from the Grand Holy Mosque, which is visited by millions of Muslims each year. The museum "will offer a unique interpretation and reflection of faith to the millions of Muslims who visit Makkah from around the world and who, up until this point, have had no cultural institution of this kind to enhance their visit to the holiest of Muslim cities," write the architects.
Images have been released of a new mosque planned for Copenhagen. Designed by Henning Larsen Architects, the mosque will replace an existing one on the corner of Dortheavej and Tomsgårdsvej in the Nordvest district of the city. ”One of Copenhagen's slightly forgotten districts will receive a new architectonic pearl,” says Morten Kabell, the city's deputy mayor for technical and environmental issues. The Copenhagen Municipality has approved the project’s planning application and completion is expected for February 2016.
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