Located amidst a dense fabric of residential and commercial buildings, the plot allotment for Gulshan Society Jame Mosque was relatively small au contraire to the large cohort of devotees it had to cater.
This has thus resulted in agglomeration of the volume vertically in contrast to the archetypical mosque typology we are used to seeing. Devoid of horizontality, the Shaan-prayer hall sequence had to be substituted and perhaps, the central void on the eastern entry compensates for that. Despite being an air-conditioned complex, the breakout spaces take the advantage of natural ventilation through the jail structure wrapped around the building. Besides doing justice to the climatic sensitivity, the jail represents an abstract connotation of a fundamental declaration of Islam “La-ilaha-illallah” in kufic script. The monumentality of the form to my inference is toned down with the choice of materiality; white cast concrete, giving it a semblance of a monolith in the city’s skyline.
This has thus resulted in agglomeration of the volume vertically in contrast to the archetypical mosque typology we are used to seeing. Devoid of horizontality, the Shaan-prayer hall sequence had to be substituted and perhaps, the central void on the eastern entry compensates for that. Despite being an air-conditioned complex, the breakout spaces take the advantage of natural ventilation through the jail structure wrapped around the building. Besides doing justice to the climatic sensitivity, the jail represents an abstract connotation of a fundamental declaration of Islam “La-ilaha-illallah” in kufic script. The monumentality of the form to my inference is toned down with the choice of materiality; white cast concrete, giving it a semblance of a monolith in the city’s skyline.
Written by: Saif Sadequl.
The idea of the expression of Kufic scripture here is dynamic, the formation shown here may not be entirely accurate rather it is a conception.
