Lecture: Marina Tabassum
10.11.2016, 7 PM
Mosques don’t need minarets!
Lecture: Marina Tabassum, 2016 recipient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture
Place: S AM Swiss Architecture Museums, Steinenberg 7, 4051 Basel
Admission: 10.- CHF, 8.- CHF (red.)
Language: english
Supported by: Hans und Renée Müller-Meylan Stiftung
„Mosques don’t need minarets“, says Bengali architect Marina Tabassum, who just received the most important architecture award of the Islamic world, the Aga Khan Awardfor Architecture. She received the award for her Bait Ur-Rouf-Mosque in Dhaka, which indeed has neither minaret nor a traditional cupola. The building foregrounds a radically contemporary interpretation of a religious space and renounces on all traditional identifying codes. This way, Tabassum says, the mosque can be more than a space of prayer, it becomes a place of gathering for the community, a secluded public space in fact. This fusion of the sacred the profane also shows in the architectural design. The building does not express its function as a mosque to the outside. Built out of bricks and concrete, the building has no windows or technical installations – light and air stream freely through the small openings due to the positioning of the bricks in the façade. When entering the mosque, visitors feel like stepping into a labyrinth. By the time they’ve reached the prayer hall, they’ve left their every day worries behind and can concentrate on contemplation. A building relying solely on natural aeration is unusual, even radical for a region with such a hot and humid climate, but it makes a lot of sense economically, as the energy supply is expensive and can be highly unreliable. In addition, the architecture connects the visitor to the city. This is a luxury in a place were most public buildings are heavily air-conditioned and thus sealed off from their surroundings.
Marina Tabassum belongs to a generation of younger Bengali architects who are reinterpreting the traditional architecture of their country in an impressive way. Her contemporary radical architecture points to her traditional sources in a poetic way. By forgoing excessive technical facilities and returning to local craftsmanship she prevents long transits and enable more cost-effective and sustainable construction.
Bangladesh’s architects have continuously been developing its architecture with utmost consideration of its cultural sources. The Bengali architect and thinker Muzharul Islam played a crucial role for this process. The architect who was trained in the US made a point of bridging tradition and modernity and equally honouring locality and internationality. He brought international protagonists to Bangladesh for important construction projects, most notably Louis Kahn for the building of the national parliament. But he also discovered and promoted many of the young architects who are important today, including Marina Tabassum.
The current architecture debate is conducted by a generation of architects who are influenced by Muzharil Islams thinking. Many of the protagonists who are active today where companions or students of Muzharul Islam and have shaped an independent architecture scene over the last decades pursuing the societal and architectural causes of their predecessors. Time and time again this loose group stands up for common architectural values and awareness of Bengali culture in the face of rapid global development. Along with impressive built work the education and mediation plays an important role in this extraordinarily commitment on different socially relevant levels.
Marina Tabassum Architects is part of Bangaldesh’s vibrant architecture scene that is advancing to an international insider’s tip but is still largely unknown in Switzerland. For winter 2017 S AM is producing the first exhibition worldwide on contemporary architecture in Bangaldesh in cooperation with the Lucerne architect Niklaus Graber.
