Architecture of Faith

At the 56th Venice Biennale last year, Swiss artist Christoph Büchel installed a mosque in the Icelandic Pavilion that was later closed by the local council and police. While there were many reasons given for this course of action, including representations that the space did not have the capacity for many visitors, the response in the media and elsewhere attributed these action to a fear of Islam and Muslims practicing their religion. Hostility toward mosques has been an apparent motive in a number of controversies in the past five years that have received media attention.

Proposals for new mosques in both Europe and Australia have been facing significant public opposition and media attention. In 2009 Switzerland voted to ban minarets on new mosque building projects. Last year in Australia a group of local residents in Bendigo took their case opposing the development of a new mosque to the High Court of Australia. Against this backdrop of drama and resistance, Australia’s most distinguished architect, the only Australian to ever win the Pritzker Prize, Glenn Murcutt has for the past 10 years quietly been working on the Australian Islamic Centre. It includes the biggest contemporary mosque in Australia and has been designed to be a symbol of transparency, inclusiveness and faith for the Muslim community of Newport and Melbourne.

In the outer suburbs of Melbourne a brave group composed the local Muslim community, non-Muslim residents, local government authorities, as well as Melbourne architect Hakan Elevli and Glenn Murcutt, have worked together on this project to demonstrate that architecture can bind different cultures and integrate them with the local environment to create something uniquely Australian and Muslim – in true Australian style. The project not only overcomes fears about the impossibility of living together, but in doing so actually creates a unique view of a future culture, where our differences create distinction but are in the end sublimated to our mutual respect for nature and climate.

Currently at the National Gallery of Victoria “Architecture of Faith” tells this story with an exhibition as well as a series of site visits to the mosque as it is under construction in Newport, Victoria. Elevli led a recent tour, explaining the story, the vision of the project owners, and how they were realized in the architectural features directed by himself in partnership with Glenn Murcutt.

The Newport Islamic Society is a predominately Lebanese community. Ten years ago it started to outgrow its current mosque, a very small masonic hall. In discussions the local council suggested a horse paddock as a site for a new development. As they began a four-year process of rezoning, there was a mixed reaction from the community. Newport Islamic Society committee members used public consultation to win local allies to their cause.

“First of all this was for the youth, they didn’t have a place where they could go and think this is an Australian mosque where they can feel comfortable. They don’t understand Arab design or an Ottoman inspired mosques,” said Elevli. The committee decided it had to be designed wanted a contemporary architect, someone like Zaha Hadid. And in the end it was one of the local non-Muslim residents they invited to be on their sub-committee, Michael Zaar, who proposed and contacted Glenn Murcutt. Australian style is synonymous with Glenn Murcutt, and his involvement gives this project a truly unique and deliberate branding. When contacted the famous architect responded that if he was to take on this job he should work with someone who understands Islamic architecture. To his astonishment, HakanElevli was approached by the Newport Islamic Society to be Murcutt’s project architect partner.

Hakan Elevli is a well-known Muslim architect from Melbourne who has worked on a variety of contemporary projects, including a mosque in the Keysborough area. While reluctant to do another mosque, Elevli was surprised and flattered when they approached him to be Glenn’s project architect partner. “I thought I don’t really want to do another mosque, I want to do contemporary things, I want to do things that represent what I think architecture should be. And then they said, would you be interested in working with Glenn Murcutt?” Glenn Murcutt is one of Australia’s most celebrated and respected architects. Apart from winning the Pritzker Architecture Prize he has received twenty-five Australian Architecture awards and the Order of Australia. As a former chairman of Aga Khan international award for Islamic architecture, he also has a demonstrated interest.

For Murcutt, everything must have a purpose. The design evolves from the basic requirements of the building, and all features must be related to one of these requirements. The experienced architect fostered a relationship with the client that allowed them to accept this philosophy, even if it challenged – indeed, “provoked” – ideas of what a Mosque should look like. As Elevli explains, the most important thing for Islamic architecture is facing Mecca and not having people walk in front of you when you prey, “beyond that there are no real requirements”. Murcutt’s philosophy of everything has to have a purpose had a strong impact on the mosque project as he began to remove all the features conventionally associated with mosques but were not required. “Glen doesn’t do anything half heartedly – so he started educating the Islamic community, the Islamic world including myself.” This affected its entrance, form and structure, reflection and light, minaret and dome. In fact the later two features, almost synonymous with mosques, were not applied at all. “There was no microphone years ago, so they needed the dome to amplify the noise,” says Elevli, “back in the day they used to walk up the minaret so people knew it was time to prey. However with the development of electronic amplification that kind of structure is no longer necessary”.

Instead of a dome the main roof is comprised of 96 lanterns colored red, green, blue and yellow. The lanterns are triangular and oriented toward north, south, east and west. This ensures that as the sun passes overhead there is always sufficient light in the interior, albeit a light that constantly changes, splitting patterns across the interior floor and walls. In combination with this function, the lanterns serve as flues to ventilate the air, on a hot day they open out to allow air to permeate the building, obviating the need for air conditioning. Other reflections are formed by ponds and water features around the building, on the side of the Oibla wall a slim water feature reflects late afternoon sun into the prayer hall, creating a feeling of relaxation as the bouncing light reflects on the walls.

Many of the functions of the mosque are enclosed, however there is a covered entrance at the front faced with glass glazed doors which allow the centre to open up and appear transparent – to be scalable and allow for additional people to attend ceremonies, to allow people to visit and see through what is happening.  “The idea was to make this a very transparent building. It was about making it very welcoming to everyone, not only to Muslim people but to people of all faiths and communities,” Elevli said.

It is clear that Murcutt has done his best to make this a contemporary Australian mosque – one that invites everything and everyone in, even the light. It responds to the environment, and the specifications of an Islam architecture project, but also shows openness, a transparency, which makes sense in a land of hot weather and vast distances. The dark stillness and the intimacy of many European sacred spaces – be they churches or mosques – would not suit this environment. As Elevli says, “Glen’s idea was to have these beautiful sunrays coming up from the back of the mosque which is to attract, to draw us into the mosque”. These features adapt the function to the context and bring the construction into harmony with its environment.  “Everything has been built intricately and nothing is standard, nothing has come off the shelf, everything is customized,” Elevli says, “it is like a couture building”.

In the end, while the Mosque had to represent and facilitate Islamic practices, one of its key aims as a monument was to be simple, beautiful and welcoming for all visitors. “We can have it all transparent, we can make it inclusive,” says Elevli, “instead of the ordinary darkness and gloom of the church or mosque interior, there have waterways everywhere, reflecting nature”. This is a project that negotiates the divide between visitor and local, non-Muslim and Muslim, young and old and most importantly new and settled – by using architecture to cross those divides. “If you want to learn about it, be a part of it, be inclusive, if you want something to represent you – this is what this community wants this mosque to be. Now with all the problems it is becoming more of a communication to that but before that I think it was the other way.” “I am an Australian Muslim, with a Turkish background, and this is a way of saying ‘we are like you’, ‘there is nothing different from us to you, I like the finer things in life, I like comfortable environments, I like parks, I like landscape, I like beautiful architecture – this is the same as anyone else that wants to live this way and this is a way to communicate this”. “I’m really ecstatic about what’s going on what’s happening with it. I really love coming here, I feel at peace here and I think everyone should be proud of it, I think everyone should own it”.

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Hakan Elevli answered questions during a recent site visit to the Australian Islamic Centre that is currently under construction.  

until 19 February 2016
Architecture of Faith
National Gallery of Victoria
Federation Square, Melbourne