21st-century mosque design

June 28, 2024 9:19 AM

Mosqpedia is an encyclopedia of winners of the triennial Abdullatif Al Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture, focused on contemporary ideas in mosque design and construction. The award also has a YouTube channel with short documentaries in a variety of languages, including English, that discuss the architects' design decisions.

- The "winners" link is from the entry for the Naji Hamshari Mosque in Amman, Jordan.
- Not all of the mosques are modernist; many are in a more traditional style, like this one.

posted by mediareport (6 comments total)

I have a thing for Islamic art and architecture, particularly traditional tiling. So seeing all these cool buildings is really neat. Their youtube channel has more videos that have english captions
posted by Dr. Twist at 12:34 PM on June 28 [2 favorites]

Whoa, it didn't occur to me to turn on closed captioning, Dr. Twist; thanks so much for that! Opens up so much more information about the mosques.
posted by mediareport at 1:27 PM on June 28

while not 21st century, The Corniche Mosque, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia is quite beautiful. List on the First link
posted by clavdivs at 2:38 PM on June 28 [1 favorite]

I always feel a little bad when religious architecture decides to go with grandeur and awe rather than intimacy. I feel like god is more often found in small places.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:30 PM on June 28 [1 favorite]

I generally agree, GenjiandProust, though also enjoy the thrill of a nice monumentally awesome building. I do like the spare simplicity of the ecumenical Pavillion of Meditation and Prayer at a cardiac surgery center in Khurtum. The description of how they tried to make it welcoming to Sudan's multiple religions is interesting. And I was happily surprised to find this in the description of the link to the Dian Al-Mahri Mosque at the end of the post:

Just imagine: all the domes, pillars, chandeliers and other ornaments are covered by pure 24 carrat gold...There’s still a lot of poverty in Indonesia, and arriving at the mosque after driving through run down and impoverished neighborhoods certainly raises a few interesting questions as to whether the money was wisely spent or not.

(Also, I think I messed up the description of the Mosqpedia; it appears to have many more mosques than the winners of the triennial competition.)
posted by mediareport at 6:53 PM on June 28 [1 favorite]

appears to have many more mosques than the winners of the triennial competition
mostly modern mosques, however: "new ideas for mosque design," e.g. look elsewhere for the blue mosque & hagia sophia [smarthistory]
posted by HearHere at 3:57 AM on June 29