SACRED SPACE??

read more at PBS | Frontline

Sacred Space: (Re)Constructing the Place of Gender in the Space of Religion
A Photographic Installation by Maryam Eskandari, American Iranian Architect | Artist
Opening reception: February 17, 2011, 5:30-7:30pm
On view: February 1-March 21, 2011

With 6 million observant Muslims residing in the United States, there is an ever-present demand for construction of mosques in U.S. cities. The architectural design of community mosques in the U.S. emerges as a particularly understudied problem in the aforementioned encounter between Middle Eastern architecture and American religious practice. Numerous case studies and investigations of a diverse set of mosques were conducted and studied, indicating an overwhelming majority of diverse Muslim communities across the U.S., articulating the ideal space between a “Modern Mosque” versus a “Traditional Mosque.”

All images are now part of the the Aga Khan Visual Archive.

Sponsored by: The Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture, Harvard and MIT Libraries, School of Architecture + Planning.

Redesigning Mecca

November 18, 2010 | Maryam Eskandari

Featured in New York's Elan Magazine

This last week, roughly between two to four million Muslims were honorary guests at the “House of the Divine” to fulfill a spiritual cleansing. Millions of people come each year to visit this architectural wonder, built by the father of the three monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They get to witness the foundation that Abraham laid, in order to build his Ummah or the society of the “Abrahamic Faiths.” This year Muslims visited the Ka’aba, before it goes under heavy renovation by two of Britain’s “starchitects”: Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid.

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