Reflections on the new Cambridge Mosque.

Ask most people, Muslims included, what a mosque is, and you will get a multitude of answers; but most of all you will get the typical response – oh it’s a dome and a minaret and probably something old style and traditional. But it’s a real tangle of a subject and I’m treading very warily as I wander into it.

I was a consultant on the Cambridge Mosque project for a time (over 10 years ago ) and I ended up fielding questions from entrants to the mosque design competition. Not living in the UK and not registered as an architect there, I didn’t qualify to enter even though I was invited to. One of the questions I had from one entrant was ‘where does it say in the Quran how to build a mosque? The very first mosque in Medina was as far as we know just a piece of ground, set aside, clean, with probably a low wall to keep out animals and originally oriented to Jerusalem before it was changed to Mecca, 17 months after the Prophet’s arrival in Medina from Mecca. It may have had some reed covering as sun protection. And a famous tree.

When I was asked to come up with a quick (three weeks) sketch design for the mosque in late 2008 to help raise funds for the land purchase, the brief I was given requested simply an Anglo Ottoman mosque for a thousand worshippers, eighty cars and fully costed. (see previous post) A bit of a tall order in the time requested. The Ottoman bit was stylistically pretty straightforward, striped brick courses, courtyards, flattened domes and pointy minarets, marble and stone. But Anglo? Would this be Gothic, Tudor, Classical, Georgian, Victorian, Modern? How could one avoid a dog’s dinner of a building given this choice?

After some consideration I decided that because of the eclectic nature of Victorian architectural styles, there could be a possible fusion of some Victorian ideas with Ottoman architectural styles. This would seize on the Paxton glass and cast iron constructions that can be found in Kew Gardens in London and in his famous enormous cast iron dome in Buxton, Derbyshire as well as the doomed Crystal Palace which dramatically burnt to the ground in 1936. Paxton’s work was for me by far the most honest and elegant of Victorian architectural constructions, and I felt there was a possibility of marrying it somehow with the modesty and intimacy of buildings like Rumi’s tomb in Konya with its simple volumes of domes, cones and minarets. I hadn’t considered, and was not asked, to consider an ecologically sustainable building. Interestingly Bentley’s Catholic cathedral in Victoria street In London was probably the first attempt to mimic Ottoman ideas in an English city setting. Based around the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul. Illustrated below.

After the Cambridge mosque competition finalist was announced — the Marks Barfield partnership — the prize winning designers of the London Eye, my first reaction was with some nervous disappointment. Did this imply those who promoted the competition wanted a kind of fun-palace mosque with a minaret helter-skelter which launched the muezzin into the mosque after the call to prayer. Obviously not, but it did occur to me.

I’m writing this in preparation for a visit to the mosque itself though I will give,my reactions later in this post to visiting the finished mosque at its opening in December 2019 – having thought about it now for several years. I’ve realised in advance that a kind of conventional architectural appraisal might not apply in this case. As we are entering a kind of post post-modern era of almost universal social upheaval and anxiety as well as what looks increasingly like an environmental endgame and technological armageddon, then we can begin to throw away some of the architectural rule books. Who cares anymore?

I’ve had to deal with a few mosque designs myself over the last 35 years, and none of them that successful so I have a slightly jaundiced view of the subject. Crafts in the western countries are all alive and well with burgeoning calligraphy schools and geometry seminars and the growth of specialists in islimi, woodcarving and zillij. But with regard to the subject of architecture we find problems. This is because mosque design brings together the difficult conjunction of mosque committees, planning and building law, local politics, public opinion, fund raising, before you even get near the actual design of the building and it’s construction and most problematic of all – in what style!

My rule of thumb in this situation is to make a simple litmus test. When you walk into a mosque (or any religious building, or come to that, any building) you are greeted by the collective intention or big idea that’s behind the establishment of the building. I’ve walked into many mosques and on the whole you are welcomed at the door by all the generosity and hard work and the love that went it to its creation. The donations, the legalities, the local objections and so on and in the case of old mosques in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey, centuries of devotion as well. There’s no time that it wasn’t a challenge to get people to cooperate enough to erect a building for the glory of God. It’s that chemistry and effort that greets you as you enter such buildings.

I have also stepped into mosques in which that initial reaction was coloured by nationalism or money or both. Is it a race-temple or just an architect’s ego? As someone I know observed entering a new mosque in Spain ‘you could smell the Arab money’. This isn’t to denigrate those who donated generously towards such a building but often money brings strings with it unless it has been given cleanly ie with no ulterior motive. But where the money originates is only the tip of the iceberg. The complexity just begins there. I know that the Cambridge mosque was costly and I’m sure has come under criticism as such but if anyone is able to filter donations and not to be compromised by them it’s Dr Abdal Hakim Winter the prime mover behind the project.

I finally visited the Cambridge mosque at its ceremonial opening in December 2019 and although the event had been somewhat hijacked by the Turkish sponsors as a kind of publicity platform for their head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it was hardly surprising given how much they had contributed to the £23 million bill. Yusuf Islam is a patron of the project and his involvement was inevitable in the process of publicising and fundraising and had personally invited the Turkish head of state to the opening of the mosque. It was a massive security operation with layers of identity checks and a huge police presence.

Aside from the design of the building itself, what impressed at the outset was the trouble taken to consult the future neighbours and local authorities even to the degree of appointment of local non Muslim residents to the competition jury. Also careful consultation with the future women worshippers in the mosque on their requirements. This indicated the kind of care taken. This wasn’t like some UK mosques built in the 1970s which were built with a kind of fortress siege mentality, not through any fault of their own but just because they knew no alternative.

Judging by the positive reaction from the architectural establishment and the building industry, the new mosque has scored well on several counts. But it’s praise has been more for its eco credentials and zero carbon technology than traditional architectural attributes—ie siting, proportions, planning, detailing, architectural influences etc. In that sense it’s hard to categorise. This is a technological age, like it or not, and what impresses is primarily the functionality and the technology. Presumably using technology in an attempt to help undo the damage done by …… technology.

Although I consider an eco mosque a welcome idea, it’s not for me the most important point to consider. Is it a place you want to pray in? Is it clean and secure? Can you find solace and tranquility in it to calm a fevered brow? Does it have to reflect the local vernacular? I suspect most worshippers have their own idea of what a mosque should be but if it is clean, and uncluttered and beautiful and built with the right spirit it’s hard to go wrong. Beauty of course is a subjective term and that could just mean a simple mud structure or a huge complex Ottoman building. But it’s a divine attribute which will clearly manifest if it’s there. I visited a mosque in Morocco in the 1970s built entirely of corrugated iron with an earth floor and which was the hub of a shanty town and which was nothing but beautiful. It would have really confused traditionalists being all metal with no acknowledgment of the golden section.

There are certain well considered functional aspects of the Cambridge mosque worth mentioning now that I’ve seen it. Clearly because of the congestion and overcrowding at the nearby previous Mawson Road Mosque the underground car park and frontal garden spaces facing on to Mill Rd were crucial. Being set back from the road was essential. The garden and atrium clearly was a good idea to allow for the decanting of a lot of people on Fridays after the main weekly prayer. Also because of the inclement British weather the covered area or atrium immediately outside the prayer hall is an indispensable space in which people can meet and also gain access to the other areas of the building. This might seem obvious but these matters need good planning. It’s just a functional solution to a problem.

The dome seems to me a bit odd as if it was an afterthought. Domes were originally built as it was a way of creating a large uninterrupted space but constructing them traditionally required extreme skill. On the other hand the dome does create a focal point in the prayer space. It’s symbolic. Without these features we would just have a shoe box which could be mistaken for a telephone exchange or a car showroom, so these features serve to distinguish it as a religious building and different from the surrounding structures. But it doesn’t stop it being odd in my book. It’s not clear if the wooden tree columns are structural ie holding the roof up or not. I think they are not. (correction: they are structural) Actually I found out that they are an off-the-peg product by the Swiss manufacturer but specially adapted for the mosque design.

I have reservations about modern building techniques as they are a reflection of some of the ruthless way modern society functions. There’s little of craft left in the building process these days which has now become the assembly of a kit of machine made parts specified by an architect and assembled on site. The under structure of the building, with its reinforced concrete columns, is still assembled in situ but only as a framework for the prefabbed components. This mosque is a curious mix of traditionally laid brick walls, reinforced concrete columns and slabs and the spruce trees which cannot possibly be structural. So there’s a hint of theatre here, of creating an atmosphere. But for some reason it doesn’t bother me. It is light and youthful as a result and not weighed down with a top heavy authoritarian traditionalist dogma.

It’s function however as a zero carbon structure is clearly one of the top priorities not an echo of the archetypal Turkish mosque structure which is itself a throwback to Byzantine church structures, The running costs of any mosque are actually very high. The monthly energy bill of the Cambridge mosque of £12k is not to be sneezed at. So we should try to judge it rightly on its cost saving ecological benefits.

Could a hand craft-built mosque been built with truly structural columns and walls supporting a roof in the legal and financial environment of Cambridge? We shall never know. It seems the design of the building apart from fulfilling planning and its functional needs, has been about creating an effect or atmosphere. This isn’t a criticism. But there is not much evidence of any conscious tradition here except for the geometrical marquetry doors, designed by Keith Critchlow. The geometric floors were doubtless cut with lasers but that is the craft of the modern world we live in if you like. Lasercraft. It’s a craft but of this time. But the geometry is timeless and self evidently sacred. The same goes for the wooden trees which echo the beautiful stone fan vaulting in the nearby Ely Cathedral and Kings College chapel. Seen below

Naturally some guests were disappointed and one traditionally minded attendee complained to me that he thought the new building was a mausoleum of crafts which I took to mean that he thought there was no craftsmanship in the building. He also said it had no baraka. But most people I spoke to said they loved it. Really loved it. It’s somehow just very….Cambridge. I thought it worth finding out what this traditionalist beef was. I found this :

Tradition vs Traditionalism
In an interview in 1989, the Yale historian of Christianity Jaroslav Pelikan said: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenised tradition.”

This quote highlights for me this collision of ideas about what is in this case, a mosque, and is supposed to be why to view the new Cambridge mosque through the lens of the traditional architectural critic and the language of the traditional mosque is a mistake. Most people are not architectural experts and if they understand enough to say they like it, who are we to carp? This hi tech, carefully thought out and very well built building, right down to the the foot driers in the ablution areas, is everything that the younger generation of Muslims and even non-Muslims aspire to. It successfully breaks the mould of the fuddy-duddy notion of what a religious building should be. If you want ‘traditional’ tradition you have thousands of ancient mosques all over the world to satisfy your need and I more than anybody greatly appreciate them. Cambridge however, is a centre of the world of science and innovation (like it or not) and is filled with people who will respond to the youthful spirit of this mosque. The building offers the answer to a multitude of needs to do with prayerfulness and the pastoral, as well as the social and physical needs of a community like weddings, funerals, local cultural events and so on. It is also important because of its dialogue from the outset with the surrounding community at a time when to avoid this is ill advised.