Universal Design in Mosque

As a public building, mosque should not give any barrier for Muslim (Islamic community) to perform their religious activities. Mosque is regularly used at least five times a day for praying, and more frequent with other events. Mosque should be friendly for all. All information should be able to be understood by its jamaah (congregation), but in fact some people still find problems to attain it nowadays. For example, praying call that’s made resound through audio instrument for sure is a problem for Muslim with hearing obstacle. Other problems also occur in recent mosques and these facts turn into a barrier for Muslim to do their religious activities. Those problems are tried to be solved through this universal mosque design. Universal design (UD) principle was chosen based on its given possibility to explore any potential fixture to decrease or even dismiss physical barrier for its user. In this project, UD principles play its biggest rule to change common mosque architecture, while another was based on accessibility standards regulation. By understanding UD principle, the process also synthesizes common mosque activities culture with study of users’ characteristic and mosque architectural program. This combination attempts to make a mosque easier to understand, regardless of the user's experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level as wished by UD principle. 

Universal_Design_in_Mosque.pdf