Shortlisted for the 2021 Stirling Prize, this mosque is a truly innovative building, which is sustainable and socially and architecturally integrated into and respectful of its neighbourhood. As well as discussing its design and construction, this book focuses on the creation of a unique place of worship for a community. Setting out historic precedents and influences, it highlights how this mosque breaks new ground in terms of Islamic and English religious architectural traditions and how it reflects the ongoing debates on Islam and Britishness, as well as Islam and Tradition. The book sets out how the site and then the architects, Marks Barfield Architects, were selected, by winning a limited competition in 2009. The book then discusses the development of the mosque's concept, structure and key design aspects, including the significance of geometry to Islam and the defining feature of Cambridge Mosque - its timber structure. The timber columns, or 'trees', reach up to support the roof using an interlaced octagonal lattice vault structure evocative of English Gothic fan vaulting, famously used at the nearby Kings College Chapel, Cambridge. The book also includes a useful technical section on the many sustainable features of the building and its carbon neutrality. It explores and thoroughly describes the mosque, inside and out, from its ornamental garden to its prayer hall, screen (movable), minbar, and mihrab. The book concludes with a section which provides a sense of the day-to-day life of the mosque, including interviews with the imam, members of the local community who come from all over the world, and highlights what impact the mosque has had for the wider Cambridge community and beyond, as well as the lessons which can be learnt from it.
Michael Glover is a poet and the visual arts critic and senior feature writer for the Independent. He is also the poetry editor of the Tablet. As an arts journalist, he has been a regular contributor to The Times, the Financial Times, the New Statesman and The Economist and a London correspondent for ArtNews, New York. Recent publications include John Ruskin: An Idiosyncratic Dictionary (Lund Humphries 2019) and a monograph on contemporary painter Neo Rauch (Lund Humphries 2019), both published by Lund Humphries.
Dedication. Acknowledgements. Introduction. What is a Mosque? Julia Barfield and David Marks: Practising the Art of Idealism. Keith Critchlow and the Sacred Art of Geometry. The Trees! The Trees! Sustainability. Welcome to the Mosque: a Tour into the Heart of the Sacred. Bibliography. Glossary of some key Islamic Terms
