Design Criteria for Mosques and Islamic Centers

Abstract

In an area where only a handful of books exist, Design Criteria for Mosques is a welcome addition. A follow up of sorts to Kahera’s Deconstructing the American Mosque (2002), it was hoped that this text would present new material and a fresh analysis in addition to serving as a guide for design. The five-chapter book covers mosques built in North America and Europe from the early 1920s onwards and incorporates many images and architectural drawings, including many from the author’s design office. Several overall issues related to inconsistency, however, undermine its potential. The greatest one is that of voice, a common enough problem when a book is written by multiple authors – the text fluctuates between didactic and spare guide lists for planning and building a mosque to a philosophical discourse on the meaning of each issue related to designing contemporary mosques. The images and drawings could have mediated between the two polarized voices. The use of images, if explained in the text or even in subtitles, could have faciliated the discourse and related the ideas to the guideline lists. Yet this is not the case, for the images and drawings (of inconsistent quality and often with illegible dimensions) are included in the text’s body but seldom referenced in the text. The captions are also non-explanatory, thereby leaving the reader to guess at their relevance to the discourse and the lists ...