BDonline reports that a proposal by the British design firm Atkins for the expansion of the Haram Mosque square appeared (has been leaked) on the Internet:
I would like to comment on this video. The pseudo Arabic accent of the narrator notwithstanding the pointed arches and arches in general were developed by the Romans and later used as a construction technique in the Islamic world. The Greco-Roman architects curved the famous arches over the great Sofia of Constantinople before it became a mosque.
Pointed Roman arches at the Aqueduto das Águas Livres em Lisboa, Portugal
The shape of the proposed structure is complex parabolic surface has everything to do with the advances in the computer modeling in the last 20-15 years and much less to do with the Roman or any other arches. If I were trying to sell this thing I would have said that it looks like the Islamic symbol of the Crescent Moon (actually a crescent that has been doubled up over a string).
The challenge of such an enormous project is to channel and shelter from the sun the crowd. Projects of this scale often look inappropriately industrial. This one acts like it’s a Hoover Dam for people. In the process it losses the most interesting feature of the Islamic architecture, the tactility of an elaborate surface pattern. The human scale is at the center of the holy site – Google image search – Black Stone of the Kaba.
Here are some examples of the traditional Islamic mosaic surface touch. The great Moorish Qal’at al-Hambra in Granada, Spain (Flickr photos by Ebu Katada, Fouad Bechwati, Takanobu Shuji)
Or the great Registan in Samarkand, Uzbekistan (Flickr photos by Kelly Cheng, Pouria Lotfi, anitzsche)
Talking about cross cultural “borrowings”. Chinese/Mongols brought Persian porcelain masters to China after Chingis Chan concurred these lands. The very masters that are respocible for the porcelain surfaces of Registan in Samarkand. But everyone still calls porcelain “China”.
Further Reading:
Are the Narrow Streets Uniquely Arabic?
El Lissitzky Suprematist London
Michael Tyznik Proposal for a New Greenback
