Description

The mosque and school of the Dar Al Islam Foundation stand on a plateau above the Chama Valley, near the settlement of Abiquiu to the north of the capital Sante Fe. The buildings and its inhabitants are part of a project that was initiated in the late seventies. The project was born out of a utopian notion of a liberal Islamic community of learning and teaching, consisting of around 150 families in the otherwise predominantly Christian southwest of the U.S.. The project ultimately failed, however the mosque and school still remain. The modular architecture with its barrel vaults, semi-cupola, pointed arches and adobe screens is common to both buildings so that they appear as one, although the mosque stands at an angle to the rectangular form of the rest of the complex, highlighting its special role.

The restricted vocabulary of the architecture had been refined previously over a period of 40 years by the Egyptian architect in the development of his earthen settlement at New Gourna near Luxor. The decision to build the complex entirely of earth has two reasons: New Mexico lies on the same latitude as northern Africa and shares a similar climate; and building with earth has a long tradition in the indigenous as well as Hispanic­ architecture of the southwestern U.S. Only its foundation is made of concrete. To protect the building against the extreme diurnal fluctuations between hot days and cold nights and the high level of humidity, the exterior was rendered with an emulsion of ground lime and crushed cellulose.

The mosque stands on a rectangular plan measuring 14.2 by 13.45 metres according to the plan drawings. The undulating roofscape of the building reveals its inner division into two unequal parts: six small, low Byzantine domes sit over the part to the northwest, a larger, higher, Sasanid dome and two barrel vaults on either side to the left and right cover the area to the southeast. This forms the centre of the house of prayer and accordingly faces towards Mecca.

Unlike many mosques, not to mention all rural mosques, in Abiquiu the entrance does not lie on axis with the mihrab but at right angles to it on the southwest wall. The central portion of this wall, crowned emphatically with a pointed zig-zag crenelation, emphasises the bipartite pointed arch over the door. Immediately to the left of the entrance one finds a room for ablutions clad with white, blue and green tiles around the walls and basin. Beneath the large dome in front of the niche of the mihrab, squinch arches in the corners of the ceiling transform the square plan of the room into an octagonal dome. Suspended from this Sasanid dome is a ring with eight lanterns. The numerous smaller domed areas on either side lend themselves to creating separate zones for the men and women, which are separated from one another by trellis-like screens made of earth in intricate triangular or hexagonal patterns.

Architectural Record, no. 12/1980, p. 39 | Architettura e spazio sacro nella modernità, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1992, p. 213 | Ekistics, no. 304/1984, pp. 56- | Faith and Form, no. Winter/1990/1991, p. 23 and no. 3/2001, pp. 10- | Holod, Renata, Khan, Hasan-Uddin: The Mosque and the Modern World. Architects, Patrons and Designs since the 1950s, London 1997, pp. 214-, pp. 270-, p. 279 | Progressive Architecture, no. 6/1983, pp. 90- | Richards, J.M. (et al.): Hassan Fathy, Singapur and London 1985, pp. 140-, pp. 168 | Serageldin, Ismaïl, Steele, James (Ed.): Architecture of the Contemporary Mosque, London 1996, pp. 154- | Steele, James: Hassan Fathy, London and New York 1988, pp. 115-, p. 139, p. 141 | Steele, James: The Hassan Fathy Collection. A Catalogue of Visual Documents at The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Geneva 1989, p. 86, pp. 92- | Steele, James: An Architecture for People. The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy, London 1997, pp. 146-

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