Mosques in the United States of America and Canada R20070913E.pdf

U. S . Em b ass y G e r ma ny

Mosques in the United States of America and Canada

U.S. Embassy

Germany

This catalogue shows pictures of a photo exhibition of mosques in the United States and Canada provided by Dr. Omar

Khalidi and David Donnellon. Dr. Kalidi is a researcher and chronist of mosque architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology in Boston. David Donnellon is one of the architects of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan. The

exhibit was put together by the U.S. Consulate General in Frankfurt and was irst presented in October 2006 at Stadtbibliothek

Gallus in Frankfurt. Next stops will be Cologne, Freiburg, Berlin, and Tübingen.

We thank Nancy Rajczak, Cornelia Voss, and Claudia Klein with the Information Resource Center at the U.S. Embassy Berlin

as well as Mary Ann V. Gamble and Kathy Spiegel with the U.S. Department of State, International Information Programs for

their research support, Jürgen Bodenstein with Amerika Haus Cologne for editing the introductory essay, and Martina Bögl,

Patricia Isomoh, and Sabine Seitzinger with the Press Section of the U.S. Embassy Berlin for their translations.

The German version of this catalogue can be found at: http://frankfurt.usconsulate.de

Mosques in North America

Omar Khalidi

generation that, in the words of non-Muslim architect William Preston,

sought „the stability and humanness embodied in vernacular and pre-

modern architectures.“

of „prominent members“ of the Muslim community in New York, the

other of architects, mostly non-Muslims. The debate between the

two centered on the image of the mosque. The architects wanted a

„mosque that belonged to the 21st century.“ The Muslims wanted the

designers to reproduce the style of a traditional mosque with literal

versions of historic motifs.

Islam‘s irst mosque, built in Madinah in 622, was a simple rectangu-

lar structure constructed of palm logs and adobe bricks. The United

States‘ irst purpose-built mosque, completed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in

193, was a simple rectangular building of white clapboard on a cin-

der-block foundation, with a dome over the front door.

almost universally architect-designed. And despite stylistic features

that vary considerably, especially among the more elaborate mosques,

all of them fall into one of three basic categories.

The role of the architect is to bring back the past, the familiar; to ma-

ke the users of the building feel at home; and to reinterpret its voca-

bulary in everyday language that can be easily understood.

In the 13 centuries that separate those buildings, mosque design

has evolved differently in the different countries and cultures where

Muslims live, and in the U.S., too, the thematic and visual characteris-

tics of mosque architecture had to deal with a new environment - one

that had its own pre-existing historical and visual vocabulary.

1. Imported Design

After a long and thoughtful debate the two committees agreed on a

„modernist“ building, but with the Muslim committee insisting on the

inclusion of both a minaret and a dome, neither of which were favor-

ed by the architects‘ committee. The conlicting perceptions of what

a mosque ought to look like brought into high relief the salience for

many Muslims of „old and familiar,“ a preference that many Westerners

are unaware of and some Muslims prefer to disregard.

There are mosques that embody a traditional design transplanted en-

tirely from Islamic lands. Examples are the Islamic Cultural Center in

Washington, D.C. (built in 197); the Islamic Cultural Center in Tempe,

Arizona (198), and the Islamic Center of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia

(1990).

2. Adapted Design

Other mosques represent a reinterpretation of tradition, sometimes

combined with elements of American architecture. Examples are the

Islamic Cultural Center in New York City (1991) and Daral-Islam in

Abiquiu, New Mexico (1981).

There are over 2,000 mosques in the United States, mostly housed in

buildings originally built for other purposes. Of nearly 1,000 mosques

and Islamic centers in the United States surveyed in the mid-1990‘s, fe-

wer than 100 had originally been designed to be mosques and, of tho-

se, the older ones had not been designed by architects. Many of these

simple buildings were meant to be used as cultural or community cen-

ters, with such facilities as classrooms, a library, a conference center, a

bookshop, a kitchen and a social hall, as well as recreational facilities,

residential apartments, and in some cases even a funeral home. They

had a room for prayer, but they also served as clubs, with a social hall

for weddings and parties and a basement for bingo games.

The Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. was the irst of the large, tra-

ditionally designed structures, and architecturally it is still one of

the most signiicant buildings that Muslims have built in the United

States. It is listed, and thus protected, as a historical American buil-

ding. It was designed by Mario Rossi, an Italian architect practicing in

Cairo, with the help of engineers from the Egyptian Ministry of Pious

Foundations, whose functions include care of mosques supported by

religious endowments.

Mosques that have attempted a reinterpretation of traditional archi-

tecture in the American landscape have had mixed results. The Islamic

Cultural Center (ICC) of Manhattan is one example. It was designed

by the prestigious irm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and comple-

ted in 1991 on a site in uptown Manhattan at the intersection of Third

Avenue and 96th Street. The project represents an effort to ind an

image that would please both the Muslim community and the larger,

surrounding society. The mosque was designed for the use of Muslims

in the New York City metropolitan area, who include high-proile, in-

luential Muslim diplomats and others attached to the United Nations,

consulates, and trade ofices. During the design stage of the project,

the ICC board appointed two advisory committees, one composed

Similar to the Washington, D.C., mosque in conceptual framework, but

differing in scale and location, is the Dar al-Islam mosque in Abiquiu,

New Mexico, designed by the great Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy. It

was built in 1981 and is used predominantly by native-born American

Muslims. The mosque‘s dramatic form, as sculptural as anything in

the surrounding landscape, was achieved by combining a Byzantine

and Sasanid dome, barrel vaults, and large, pointed arches. The Dar

al-Islam mosque grew out of the same romanticized regional style

that Fathy created for New Gourna in Egypt, and uses the same ear-

then construction. Because of New Mexico‘s cultural links to Spain,

which nurtured a local mud-brick building tradition quite similar to

that in New Gourna, Fathy‘s Dar al-Islam is certainly appropriate to its

context.

The transplanted-mosque approach has been used by Muslim and

non-Muslim architects alike. For most of them, stylistic imitation

meant „capturing the lavor“ of the old, the familiar—or, at most,

„blending“ old and new. This nostalgic community of Muslims was of a

American mosques built in the last few decades, however, in the peri-

od in which Islam has begun to feel at home in the United States, are

3. Innovative Design

Mosque Design in North America

There are the designs that are entirely innovative, like those of the Islamic

Society of North America‘s headquarters in Plainield, Indiana (1979); the

Islamic Center of Albuquerque, New Mexico (1981); the Islamic Center of

Edmond, Oklahoma (1992) and the Islamic Center of Evansville, Indiana

(1992).

He relates his decision to contrast the inside and the outside to the fact

that Muslims are a minority living in predominantly non-Islamic America.

He sees this contrast as symbolic of the fact that Islam in this country is

a private matter of faith, rather than the state religion that it is in much

of the Islamic world.

What do these various mosque projects tell us about the nature and

direction of mosque design in North America? New and culturally un-

certain Muslim communities at irst often constructed mosques that

were architecturally nondescript. Better established communities have

built a large number of mosques in the purely traditional styles found

in their Muslim homelands, with little regard to their surroundings

in North America. Some architects have experimented with reinter-

preting traditional styles, using mixed designs and achieving equal-

ly mixed results. The innovative mosques of Haidar, Prince, and Karim

have not always been well received by the immigrant Muslim commu-

nities because they do not match the immigrants‘ notions of what a

mosque should be. Given the extreme diversity of America‘s Muslim

population, it would seem logical to favor the unprecedented mos-

que, with maximum regard for the strictly Islamic requirements and

minimum regard to ethnic or national taste or historical style, be that

Ottoman, Mamluk, or Mughal. We have seen such a compromise rea-

ched in the case of the minaret of the ICC mosque.

A decisive departure from both the transplanting of traditional architec-

ture and the modern reinterpretation of it can be found in the designs of

Gulzar Haidar, a Pakistani-Canadian, and Bart Prince, an American. Their

projects represent the innovative, the creative and the unprecedented

mosque. Haidar advocates a design approach that is „environmental,“

„morphological“ and „semiotic.“ His notable example is the mosque in

the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) headquarters in Plainield,

Indiana. According to Haidar, Islamic architecture should be expressive

and understandable to all. It should employ a form of language that in-

vokes in immigrant Muslims a sense of belonging in their present and

hope in their future. To the indigenous Muslims it should represent a lin-

kage with Muslims from other parts of the world and should underscore

the universality and unity of Islam. To the new Muslim this architecture

should invoke conidence in their new belief. For non-Muslims it should

take the form of clearly identiiable buildings which are inviting and open,

or at least not secretive, closed, or forbidding.

Conceptually related to the ISNA headquarters in terms of innovative

mosque design are a number of other Islamic centers. One was the

Islamic Center of Albuquerque, New Mexico, completed in 1991, which

was demolished in 200 and is currently replaced by a new building. The

former Islamic Center was designed by Bart Prince, a leading exponent

of organic architecture. From a distance, the building resembled a gi-

ant set of bleachers reaching skyward in tiers and topped by towers that

contained tall, narrow windows. Inside, the mosque was essentially one

large hall divided at prayer times by a temporary partition to separate

men from women. The ceiling stepped up with the tiers, supported by

thick wooden beams and rafters made of bronze-colored pipe. Daylight

poured through the narrow windows. It was a simple, elegant building,

functional, and completely at home in its environment.

Attachment to traditional design principles is, however, by and large

restricted to irst-generation immigrant Muslims. Their descendants

and American converts to Islam, who will eventually constitute the ma-

jority of the U.S. Muslim population, will probably tip the scales in favor

of more innovative architecture. Many Muslims of all backgrounds may

even see this as responding to a prime Islamic imperative: to live in

harmony with the total natural and historical environment of a place.

The work of the New Mexican architect resists easy translation into

words. Dramatic and often unusual forms characterize this project, like

his other buildings in New Mexico. His style is rooted in the peculiarly

American tradition of organicism. Deined by Frank Lloyd Wright and

the Oklahoman architect Bruce Goff, the organic tradition argues for the

necessary individuality of each architect and each architectural design.

The tradition‘s individualism makes it dificult to attribute a coherent set

of stylistic characteristics to it. Coherence comes instead from a shared

attempt to create an organically integral architecture that rethinks the

possibilities of geometry, space, structure, and material.

The ISNA mosque has an austere contemporary character that is entire-

ly without iconic references to traditional Islamic architecture. The solid

exterior walls give few clues about what is inside. According to Haidar,

the ISNA mosque addresses itself to Muslims through its concepts of al-

batin („the hidden“) and al-zahir („the manifest“), two of the 99 beauti-

ful names of God, through mystical geometry, and particularly through

its cubical form, a subliminal reminder of the Ka‘ba, the symbol of unity.

Adapted from the article “Mosque Design in the United States” by Omar Khalidi,

Saudi Aramco World, November/December 2001 issue, pp. 2-33.

Islamic Center of America, Dearborn, Michigan.

Built 200 by Alan Abbas and Luna Construction.

Islamic Cultural Center, Tempe, Arizona.

Built 198 by M. Afzal Ibrahim.

The mosque includes a minaret and golden dome, attached to an

eight-sided structure embellished with tilework depicting verses

from the Qur‘an, which are transcribed in calligraphy.

The largest mosque in the United States.

The golden hued domes, Moorish arches, and two 1

10-foot-tall minarets topped with crescent moons of

solid brass are representative of traditional Islamic

architecture. The central dome soars almost 20 meters

high.

The architecture and decoration of the Islamic Culture Center

was inspired by the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

8 – IMPORTED DESIGN

IMPORTED DESIGN – 9

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