Dubai, UAE
Being situated in a communal location that has hundreds of years of history as a place of prayer, and close to the Gold Souk and Dubai Creek, the context for Masjid bin Dafoos has a rich, historic lineage.
Essential to the project is the recognition that walls and slabs are not required in a place for prayer; rather, a “mosque” is established by the inclusion of several necessary elements: mihrab, ablution, and minaret. The “building” itself is not necessary. How the hundreds of occupants decide to congregate around these essential elements defines the architecture, defines the space, and defines the surrounding square. Thus, the notion of physical boundary is replaced by one of malleability.
The deliberately reduced form is conceived as a “cloud”: vertical facade elements of re-enforced concrete surround the fundamental religious elements, arranged so that it is possible to see directly through the architecture from the north-south elevations, and blur the edge of the mosque to the city outside.
