An architectural oddity?

A rather small building on a quiet street in the southern part of Roda Island has a lot to say. This, neither mosque nor apartment building, or both, is not a haphazard construction or the result of two conflicting interests, to build a mosque vs. to build homes, rather it is an “architected” designed hybrid building that combines the sacred and the profane. Or does it?

At first sight, this is a building that does away with the hierarchy of building types. Yet, instead of doing away all together with architectural elements that belong to the building type of a mosque and that of an apartment building, it comfortably blends elements that belong to both. Hence the minaret is maintained along with the residential balcony equipped with clothes lines. It is as if the two building types with their separate functions were merged together into one.

This may not be interesting to many readers who are used to seeing small mosques at the bottom of apartment buildings. In the last thirty years many small “mosques” began to occupy the first floor of apartment buildings, many of which were funded by good doers who have returned from the Gulf countries with money and religion. Those transformations however are afterthoughts, adaptive reuse rather than architecture.

This building in Roda was designed to house both functions and it indicates or highlights a few things:

The concept of sacred space and its superiority over other kinds of space isn’t a preoccupation of the builders of this edifice. Superstition attached to religious buildings having to do with direct relationship between prayer space and the heavens, for example (without the obstruction of human occupied space in between), is not there. This is a secular and practical take on religious space. If one draws a section through certain parts of this lived building there might be a toilet above the pulpit or a bedroom where a couple consummates their relationship above the prayer space. In all practicality these realities of everyday life do not conflict with religious duty which occupies its own separate space below.

Scale matters (or size matters). Typically wealthy individuals, governments, politicians or whoever chooses to build a religious building go for scale, big scale. These attempts in hindsight are usually telling of oppression by the religious institution or the oppression of a ruler who pompously creates over-sized space to subdue the people who will occupy it. Only recently has Cairo begun to see monstrously large mosques such as al-Fath or al-Nour which are meant to (almost violently) impose a spatial and visual marking of territory with extremely out of context super tall minarets. The smallness of this mosque in fact is telling of the relationship between the builders, religion and the community. This is a building at the right size for its context, it blends in, almost hides, as opposed to overpower, impose, or intimidate.

In addition to doing away with building hierarchy the building is a clear reminder of the ingenious system of Waqf. The reason there are apartments above the mosque is because the builder and patron created a building that is financially self sufficient. Rents from the apartments pay for the maintenance of the mosque below.

The building has two separate entrances each corresponding to one of its two separate functions. Pictured above it the entrance to the apartments on the west facade while the mosque entrance (below) is on the south facade. A marble plaque by the mosque entrance states “Farouk the First Mosque in Roda built during the reign of his majesty Farouk the Frist who performed Friday prayer and opened the mosque on 7 December 1945.”