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 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 religious endowment that owns the site was behind some of the changes.
The mosque was destroyed as a desperate final act by ISIS in 2017 and is now the centerpiece in the larger rebuilding of the city being undertaken by its remaining residents in partnership with Emirati and Iraqi officials following three years of devastation. UNESCO’s overall effort will continue in its second phase, which was kicked off by Director-General Audrey Azoulay in March.
A new timeline for the Al-Nouri upgrades was unavailable at press time. Archinect will share any updated plans as they become available.
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