The mosque between modernity and tradition : a study of recent designs of mosque architecture in the Muslim world
Date Added
16/07/2019
Content Type
Dissertation
Category
Masters
Link to Content
Publisher Name
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year of Publication
1987
Description
In this study of four recent projects of mosque architecture in the Muslim
world, the works of architects Abdel Wahid El-Wakil, Rasim Badran, Robert
Venturi and Halim Abdel Halim conciliate the cultural heritage of Arab-Muslim
societies with the Western modernizing design methods that have been introduced
since the beginning of the twentieth century.
The designs of the four architects addressed the apparent dilemma of the
duality between tradition and modernity, in an effort to suggest a character for the
identity of the contemporary mosque architecture in a dynamic cultural environment.
The study seeks to discern and to evaluate the theoretical models and the
methodology employed in the design process of each project, with the intention of
understanding their cultural compatibility. All the projects are located within the same
general area, Iraq,Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and all are based on the hypostyle
mosque,although they differ in their fundamental use of the architectural
vocabulary. Reflecting on the hypostyle mosque and its traditional place in the
liturgy as well as its identifiable historical transformations, we can weigh the
responses of each design solution to its contextual requirements and to a historical
continuum.
Thesis Supervisor: Stanford Anderson
Title: Professor of History and Architecture
Files
Sakr, Yasir M. (Yasir Mohammad)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture