Columbia GSAPP Fall 2017

Building Islam

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Instructor

Ziad Jamaleddine / L.E FT Architects

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Team Members

Eric Giragosian - Mouna Lawrence

Brief
Throughout the seminar we have learned how ‘Islamic Architecture’ field of study is a discipline that is under reconceptualization and re-construction. We have also learned that the ‘Medievalization’ of Islamic Architecture has totally divorced the modern and contemporary mosque from the history of Architecture, leaving us with a thin and fragmented knowledge of this building type and its evolution (or lack thereof) in the 20th and 21st Century. To advance the discipline, any theorization of this generation of buildings would require first a proper contextualization through the accurate survey, mapping and representation of those structures. The Seminar aims to participate in this project by offering to study NY mosques; slowly ‘building’ the knowledge necessary for such endeavor, while at the same time proposing a theoretical framework for understanding their architecture. For the rest of the semester, the class will aim to produce 5 illustrated papers on 5 NY mosques. Each mosque will be covered by a group of 3 students. The mosques (Masjids) are located across NY boroughs. They vary in scale, program and degree of integration with the city and the communities they serve.

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Assignment

The objective is to produce a layered drawing that use the mosque as a lens to make visible its physical, social and religious contexts through the architecture and spatial / programmatic dimensions. The class will collectively explore representation techniques that best convey the degree and the scales of information that need be visualized.