A blanket-like roof of perforated concrete covers the Al-Mujadilah Centre and Mosque for Women in Qatar, which has been completed by American studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro.
Located in Doha’s Education City, Al-Mujadilah – meaning “she who engages in dialogue” – combines social and educational spaces with the first purpose-built contemporary mosque for women in the Muslim world.
The 4,600-square-metre centre draws on the mosque’s role as not only a religious space but an educational and civic one, which Diller Scofidio + Renfro sought to reflect in its architectural form.
“The mosque’s role of seamlessly bringing together worship and study under one roof led to the building’s distinguishing architectural feature,” explained studio co-founder Elizabeth Diller.
“Its undulating roof arches to shape a grand space for prayer at one end and morphs downward into a slung surface that shelters an intimate space for education at the other,” she continued.
“As a woman, the project was a special opportunity for me to design a space exclusively for women that is flexible and responsive to real-time, everyday needs.”
The main hall, which has been rotated 17 degrees off-axis to face Mecca, is illuminated by a section of the concrete roof that is perforated with five thousand small light tunnels, providing diffuse light while minimising heat gain.
On the floor, a large carpet features a pixellated design that was created by scaling up a traditional prayer mat to be 35-by-20-metres in size, providing enough space for up to 750 worshippers.
Along the qibla wall, denoting the direction of Mecca, the traditional mihrab or niche is reinterpreted as a gently undulating section of wall illuminated by a skylight.
“The roof harvests diffuse, sublime daylight from a field of light wells while minimising heat gain from Doha’s strong sun,” said Diller.
“The design was also inspired by Islamic art and architecture in which abstraction serves to represent the transcendent nature of the divine,” she continued.
Separating the prayer hall from the educational space is a circular, open-topped courtyard at the centre of the building, which contains two olive trees and is wrapped by glass walls, helping to pull further diffuse light into the interiors.
Wooden bookcases line the edges of both the prayer hall and educational space, where they are accompanied by desk areas and a raised stage, as well as more secluded seating areas and rooms around the centre’s edge.
Outside, a traditional minaret has been replaced with a sculptural, cigar-shaped form supported by tensile steel cables next to the centre’s southern entrance.
Wrapped in metal mesh perforated with patterns that reference traditional mashrabiya screens, this tall structure contains mechanised speakers that rise up the tower to deliver the call to prayer.
Elsewhere, Diller Scofidio + Renfro recently opened the V&A Storehouse in London, a new model for publicly-accessible museum storage, and in Venice the studio was awarded the Golden Lion for its Canal Café project, which made coffee from lagoon water.
The photography is by Iwan Baan.
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