Description

In the capital city of the province of Khusistan in the far west of Iran, a new university was planned for 4000 students at the end of the sixties, a time when Ahvaz was growing rapidly as a result of its new-found oil reserves. A large part of the campus lies on an arid level site either side of a narrow pedestrianised walkway. Like a backbone, it traverses the site from the northwest to the southeast, before turning eastwards alongside a water channel. The path begins from a building that contains the student union and cafeteria and ends at a sports hall. The mosque is positioned directly at the bend in the path.

Regardless of whether one arrives from one or the other end of the path, one must first of all pass through a small and then a larger forecourt, each of which has an octagonal plan. The larger octagon, whose centre is marked by a fountain, is surrounded on all sides by arcades with recessed seating and “peepholes” in its rear walls. Although the mosque itself is comparatively small, its entrance is no less monumental. The contrast between the wheat-coloured brickwork and the aquamarine turquoise of the glazed tiles signals its function. The curvature of the walls draws the visitor towards a half-rounded surface, which in turn leads the visitor to the left or right, passing either the door to the reading room on one side or the door to the stair on the other, before proceeding on into the prayer hall.

The prayer hall, with a floor plan of 15 by 15 metres has no clear geometric orientation. The entrance and the mihrab on the opposite wall, through which subdued natural light falls into the room, form a central axis, which is further emphasised by a division in the women’s galleries and the half barrel vault above it. The rest of the ceiling of the mosque is coffered.

The symmetry of the building lends it a characteristic, almost inescapable spatial order: the octagon of the forecourts leading on into the square of the prayer hall. Elements that do not fit into this clear order – the reading room and staircase – are arranged in such a way that they are barely perceived either from inside or from outside. As if echoing modernist principles, the building eschews the populist attraction of typology and tradition. Although the architect does not provide a place for the Muezzin to fulfil his ritual, or a wall for the calligrapher to embellish, his intention was nevertheless to provide a “friendly, uplifting mosque” that promoted communication among its users. To this end, he drew on the traditional close relationship between mosque and bazaar that is common in Iran. Although the mosque’s three courtyards are not actually used for a market, they act as a hinge between the two main axes of the path that runs through the centre of the campus, serving as a stopover in the coming and going of the students and generally as a means of “intensifying interaction”.

L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, no. 195/1978, pp. 9- | Cruickshank, Dan (Ed.): Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture, Twentieth Edition, Oxford 1996, p. 1456 | Kamran Diba. Buildings and Projects, Stuttgart Bad Cannstatt 1981, pp. 66-, p. 240 | Frishman, Martin, Khan, Hasan-Uddin (Ed.): The Mosque. History, Architectural Development and Regional Diversity, London 1994, pp. 261- | Holod, Renata, Khan, Hasan-Uddin: The Mosque and the Modern World. Architects, Patrons and Designs since the 1950s, London 1997, p. 151, pp. 155-, p. 266, p. 275

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Originally published in: Rudolf Stegers, Sacred Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2008.