Archinect - News

UNESCO's restoration of Iraq's historic Al-Nouri mosque site has been placed on hold

2022-04-18T14:07:00-04:00

The UNESCO-led effort to restore the historic Al-Nouri Mosque in Mosul has come to a halt this week after recent discoveries and feedback from the community have prompted a change of direction from the cultural agency.

The Art Newspaper reports that the restoration was placed on hold after months of highly public criticism leading up to January’s discovery of a 12th-century prayer hall and ritual ablution rooms underneath the mosque’s interior core.

The original plans. Rendering by Salah El Din Samir Hareedy and team

The team of Egyptian architects selected last spring to oversee the overhaul will now redraw its plans for a glass-paneled modern update to the hall. Other major changes are reported to include the scrapping of a car park in favor of a new Institute for Islamic Art and Architecture and the re-installation of original the original brick pattern to form the mosque’s famed “hunchback” minaret. Exterior elements like sun shading will be thrown out as well. The Sunni religio...

12th-century UNESCO site in Afghanistan captured by Taliban

2019-06-03T12:30:00-04:00

The Taliban captured the 12th-century Minaret of Jam and killed 18 Afghan security personnel tasked with protecting the World Heritage Site. Pro-government forces have yet to re-secure the area. The current condition of the brick structure and the surrounding communities, who were both threatened by torrential flooding just last week, is still unknown.

Nearly two decades after the American-led invasion of Afghanistan began, significant works of Islamic heritage continue to fall under threat in the country.

Just last week, for example, the 12-Century era Minaret of Jam, the world's second tallest Islamic tower, appears to have been captured by the Taliban. While the ultimate fate of the UNESCO-recognized tower remains unknown, the 213-foot-tall brick minaret, one of the most significant cultural and holy sites in the country, joins a long list of relics that have been captured, damaged, or totally destroyed by the Taliban group.

In 2001, for example, the Taliban-led government famously dynamited the Buddhas of Bamiyan in northeast Afghanistan, a spectacle that garnered worldwide condemnation.

Minaret of Jam, Photo courtesy of Wikimedia user David Adamec

According to The Antiquities Coalition, "This destruction has gone hand in hand with the organized looting and trafficking of antiquities by the Taliban, Haqqani Network, and othe...

Chinese Hui Muslims resist order to demolish new mosque

2018-08-10T14:27:00-04:00

Hundreds of Muslims in north-western China are engaged in a standoff with authorities to prevent their mosque from being demolished. Officials said the newly built Weizhou Grand Mosque in the Ningxia region had not been given proper building permits. But worshippers refused to back down. One resident said they would not "let the government touch the mosque".

The new mosque was completed only last year, and city authorities initially wanted it torn down by Friday, citing a lack of proper planning and construction permits. Amid public outrage, authorities softened their demolition order to a "rectification plan" that demanded a less 'Arab' and more Chinese look.

"The first version of that plan called for the mosque’s 'Arab-style' domes to be replaced with traditional Chinese-style pagodas but was swiftly rejected by worshippers," reports the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. "The government then asked the mosque’s management committee to remove eight of the nine domes that top the mosque, leaving the largest one in the centre. That, too, was deemed unacceptable by most members of the community."

Earlier this week, the unannounced demolition of the influential Beijing studio of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei sparked international outrage.

India proposes to fight pollution after Supreme Court considers demolition of deteriorating Taj Mahal

2018-07-30T14:17:00-04:00

India has proposed a ban on plastics, polluting factories and construction around its 17th-century monument to love, the Taj Mahal, a government document showed, in a bid to stave off pollution that is turning the structure yellow and green. In a draft document submitted to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, authorities in Uttar Pradesh said they would ban all plastics, switch to electric and hydrogen vehicles, and boost the green cover within the precincts of the Taj, to fight pollution.

"The document was submitted after the justices, in a fit of anger during a hearing two weeks ago, demanded that authorities either restore the structure or tear it down," Reuters reports. "One of the seven wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal is flanked by a garbage-strewn river and is often enveloped by dust and smog from belching smokestacks and vehicles."

India's Supreme Court again weighs in on discolored Taj Mahal: shut it down, demolish it, or restore it

2018-07-16T15:50:00-04:00

The Taj Mahal in Agra could be closed unless the Indian government steps in and saves the neglected landmark, says India’s Supreme Court. “Either we shut down the Taj or demolish it or you restore it,” the two-judge committee told state officials last week. [...] The Supreme Court says that it will monitor the situation on a day-to-day basis from 31 July.

Frustrated with the slow response from officials in charge of restoring the deteriorating Taj Mahal, India's highest court demanded swift action to stop the ongoing discoloration of the iconic Unesco World Heritage site caused by pollution and millions of tiny insects, saying: "We want you to give us an action plan of what you propose to do. We will hear it and finally dispose it. If it has to be shut down, let it be shut."

The Taj Mahal went from white to yellow and now greenish

2018-05-10T19:08:00-04:00

India’s Supreme Court on Wednesday faulted the country’s archaeological conservation body for failing to protect the Taj Mahal from discoloration, dirty feet and green slime emitted by millions of mosquito-like insects. Since 2015, the body, the Archaeological Survey of India, has overseen a restoration project at the Taj Mahal, with workers scaling scaffolding to remove grime from the 17th-century tomb [...].

After decades of slowly turning dull and yellowish from smog and pollution, the Taj Mahal's formerly white facade has now taken on an unattractive green discoloration. Archaeological experts suspect swarms of tiny bugs to be the perpetrators, but India's highest court isn't pleased with the slow pace of cleanup of what is arguably India's most well know architectural landmark.

Syria Matters exhibition to document the destruction of country’s cultural heritage

2018-04-25T13:48:00-04:00

The destruction of Syria’s heritage over the past eight years is the subject of a significant show due to open at the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) in Doha later this year. The exhibition, entitled Syria Matters (opens 23 November), aims to explore the country’s centuries-old “extraordinary cultural heritage” against the backdrop of the raging conflict that has seen the destruction of six Unesco world heritage sites under President Bashar al-Assad.

Muslim-built Taj Mahal in the crosshairs of Hindu nationalists

2017-10-30T15:47:00-04:00

Times are tough for India’s monument to love. Air pollution is turning its marble surface yellow. Restoration work is obscuring its famous minarets. Tens of millions of tourists still flock to Agra each year, but numbers are reportedly waning. Critics of the Taj Mahal are also growing increasingly bold. In past months, religious nationalists in the Hindu-majority country have stepped up a campaign to push the four-century-old Mughal monument to the margins of Indian history.

"Resentment at the fact the country’s most recognisable monument was built by a Muslim emperor has always existed on the fringes of the Hindu right," The Guardian writes. "But those fringes have never been so powerful."

International Criminal Court issues ruling in first case of cultural destruction as war crimes

2017-08-31T15:08:00-04:00

The International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled on 17 August, that an Islamic extremist caused €2.7m in damages when he destroyed shrines in Timbuktu, Mali, in 2012. This is the first time that the ICC has made a ruling solely on cultural destruction, setting an important precedent. [...] Islamic extremists used pickaxes and bulldozers to destroy nine mausoleums and the centuries-old door of the Sidi Yahya mosque, built during a golden age of Islam [...].

By ruling that "the destruction of the protected buildings has caused the suffering of people throughout Mali and the international community," the International Criminal Court in The Hague acknowledged the demolition of cultural heritage as a war crime — potentially treating recent acts of violence against historic sites in Palmyra and Mosul as such as well.

International Criminal Court hears first case of cultural destruction as war crimes

2016-08-22T15:38:00-04:00

In the first case of its kind, the Islamic extremist Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi has today (22 August), pleaded guilty to war crimes for destroying historic monuments in the ancient city of Timbuktu in northern Mali. Al-Mahdi is accused of ordering the razing of nine mausoleums and the 15th-century Sidi Yahia mosque. It is the first time the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has heard a case about the demolition of cultural heritage.

Learn more about Timbuktu's outstanding value as a world heritage site on UNESCO's website.

Preserving Central Asia's ancient architecture through code

2016-04-07T13:58:00-04:00

It is not enough to just catalogue these [structures] in photos and videos, it is our aim to break down the logic of these patterns, and recreate them in code in order to make them more accessible and possibly allowing them to find new life in contemporary applications. By building an open source library, accessible to architects, artists, mathematicians, and software engineers, we can carry these patterns and traditions forward for future generations.

Lauren Connell (architect at BIG), Alexis Burson (associate at Pei Cobb Freed & Partners), and Baris Yuksel (Google senior engineer) share their architectural and computer engineering perspectives on Project Agama. The collaboration aims to document and digitally preserve the intricate geometric patterns and tilework of ancient Central Asian architecture by converting the patterns to code, which will eventually become a accessible resource for architects to potentially apply in new applications.

Legal limbo continues for Christoph Büchel's Venice Biennale Mosque

2015-08-12T14:20:00-04:00

A court in Venice has refused to fast-track a legal claim filed by the Icelandic Art Center (IAC) seeking the reopening of artist Christoph Büchel’s mosque, which launched earlier this year in a disused church in Venice as part of the Biennale. The IAC is the commissioner of the controversial project, which was housed in the former Catholic church [...]. The mosque closed at the end of May after only two weeks when city officials claimed that it breached health and safety regulations.

Previously in the Archinect News: Police Shut Down Mosque Installation at Venice Biennale

Police Shut Down Mosque Installation at Venice Biennale

2015-05-22T17:21:00-04:00

The police in Venice closed an art installation in the form of a functioning mosque on Friday morning, after city officials declared the art project a security hazard and said that the artist who created it, Christoph Büchel, had not obtained proper permits and had violated laws by allowing too many people inside the mosque to worship.

"There is no mosque in Venice, so the thousands of Muslim tourists visiting Venice must pray in a converted factory in Mestre, which is the polluted part of Venice.

This until the swiss artist Buechler converted an abandoned and unused former catholic church into a functioning mosque for the duration of this year's Art Biennial.
Short lived though, Venice Municipal Authorities just yanked the permit.
Reason: Security andSafety-it was too popular, too many people wanted to see it or pray in it.
As usual security trumps everything"

As quoted by a friend.

Khamenei's fight against "un-Islamic" architecture in Iran

2014-12-11T13:33:00-05:00

For centuries, the spatial layout of house design in Iran reflected the patriarchal structure of the society through the rigid segregation between the andaruni and biruni, private and public space. [...] Modern architecture is also considered erotic because, unlike the spatially introverted pre-modern architecture of Iran, it faces outward with windows that shamelessly offer strangers a peek at the buildings’ private parts.

Mesmerizing Mosque Ceilings built by Muslims

2014-11-12T11:13:00-05:00

I strongly disagree with the title. There is no such thing as Islamic Architecture or Islamic Culture. Islam is a multicultural faith with strong presence in Arab world, the Persian world, the Indian Subcontinent, in Eurasia and even in Europe. You cannot label an architectural style as Islamic just because it is used in a mosque. There are elements of the host culture present in this buildings. Mosques in Egypt or Turkey are significantly different from Mosques in Europe or India. -