Classifying Islamic architecture in Western terms—through the dichotomy of the traditional and the modern—denies it its modernity, resisting any sense of development or evolution into the modern period and insisting on always categorizing it as traditional, argues architect and assistant professor at Columbia GSAPP Ziad Jamaleddine.

Mohamad Ziad Jamaleddine: That’s a good question, because it is a question that all architectural practices should be asking today: what’s the role of research in design, and what is the responsibility of design practice in furthering research… Our work at L.E.FT on the architecture of the mosque started in academia. In 2011, my partner Makram el Kadi and I proposed a studio that investigated the programmatic and architectural capacities of the contemporary mosque—the mosque being a building type that is practically absent from design studios at architecture schools in the US. We taught the studio that year at Yale University and were fortunate to travel with the students, touring Syria and Lebanon to visit and learn from the great historical and modernist mosques in that region. We revisited the studio at Columbia University in 2016, this time looking at the history of the Ottoman mosque in Istanbul.

Our work at L.E.FT on the architecture of the mosque started in academia. In 2011, my partner Makram el Kadi and I proposed a studio that investigated the programmatic and architectural capacities of the contemporary mosque—the mosque being a building type that is practically absent from design studios at architecture schools in the US. We taught the studio that year at Yale University and were fortunate to travel with the students, touring Syria and Lebanon to visit and learn from the great historical and modernist mosques in that region. We revisited the studio at Columbia University in 2016, this time looking at the history of the Ottoman mosque in Istanbul.

Below is an excerpt from a conversation between Ziad Jamaleddine and architect and Strelka alumnus Nabi Agzamov, published on EastEast.

Following the Yale experience, we were commissioned to design a mosque in the rural area of Al Moukhtara in the Shouf Mountains in Lebanon, a region that has had a centuries long history of multiple religious groups co-existing and cohabiting peacefully… Peeling away the modern rhetoric of interreligious conflict that you expect to hear about in the news was one of the main challenges of the design.