ELAN
Mosques have been a reason for intense debates both within the Muslim community and outside of it. Maryam Eskandari, an architect at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard and MIT, currently has a traveling exhibit on American Mosques. She brings a new angle to the debate discussing the role of architecture as an identity issue. Her exhibit, Sacred Space: (Re)Constructing the Place of Gender in the Space of Religion is touring the nation. We sat down with the architect and artist for an interview.
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How important is creating a new identity of a modern American Mosque versus the traditional Middle Eastern architecture that is brought over?
I personal believe that it is very vital in creating a new identity of American Mosque. Here is the situation, if every time we are to cut and paste a mosque that the previous generation built, then we are not creating our own history and to make matters worse, we are implementing architecture that is not responsive to the “climate” that we are residing. For example, we cannot take a mosque with all of its architecture that is located in Saudi Arabia and put it in the middle of some land in Alaska, that is not responsive architecture. And being responsive also means taking in account the political and social situations that are happening in the area. Take the skyscraper for example, Mies Van der Rohe, the finest example of “modern” architecture. It was in response to a fast paced, multifaceted and prefabricated parts of architecture, the introduction of that style of architecture has flourished, yet we have challenged and pushed the boundaries of the very first skyscraper in New York, the Seagram building, to today’s Burj Khalifa and the rotating floor plates that are being designed in Dubai. We are able to see how other artist are able to do it—look at the music industry—musicians are changing the whole notion of rap, they are able to rap about political and social issues in response to the Muslim American identity along with creating music videos that correspond to the same issues. Muslim American want to have a new identity for “American Mosque”—they want their mosques to be a space that is modern, just like the current generation of Muslims residing in the states, malleable to the needs of the religion and each mosque responsive to the identity of the culture of the place. The mosque in New York will be different than the mosque in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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(Thanks to reader)