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Eschewing historicism, this new mosque in Turkey conveys a sense of spirituality through an austere choreography of light and space
CRITICISM
UGUR TANYELI
Though it might seem paradoxical, a mosque, unlike a church, is not a sacred place. For instance, there are no rituals of consecration. There is no special ceremony to initiate its religious function, nor a formal procedure to exempt it from use. Theoretically, Islamic prayers can be performed everywhere, provided that that place is clean. A mosque primarily gathers together the faithful, so in effect it is merely a public space. Devotional rituals in a mosque are also surprisingly straightforward An imam is not essential for daily prayers, which can be undertaken individually by believers. An imam only conducts the rhythm of the prayers and even then there is no obligation to keep to his lead. One worshipper can finish early, another can take their time. Prayers without the ministration of the imam are also permitted.
These characteristics of Islamic worship might seem to simplify the task of designing a mosque. And if modernity is a historical condition of inability to produce the sacred, as Walter Benjamin asserted, then the mosque as a building type is explicitly aligned with the modern world. Unlike other monotheistic religions, an Islamic place of worship is almost secular, achieved by assembling a minimum of crucial elements and functions. In reality, however, a new mosque cannot be brought into being with such pragmatic ease and effortlessness, since as the complexity of the functional programme diminishes, architectural expectations are commensurately greater.
In Turkey, contemporary mosque design adheres rigidly to the traditional precepts established by the great 16th-century architect Sinan, when the Ottoman Empire was at its height as a military and political world power. Most new mosques are naive imitations of Sinan's masterpieces, and only a small proportion manifest the historicist appeal of their predecessors. Beyond this, Turkish architects are rarely capable of envisaging a supranational form of mosque architecture and few contemporary mosques merit wider attention.
Recent Turkish religious architecture and the historiographical-ideological assumptions of believers are intimately bound together. Regarding themselves as direct descendants of the exalted Ottomans, today's mosque builders express their devotion through ambitious construction programmes that favour quantity over quality. Modern Turkish...