Making Space for Islam
Almost two years after Jyllands-Posten newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed, causing a global crisis that drove a deep rift between Denmark and much of the Islamic World, Danish architects are racing to realize the country’s first purpose-built mosque.
As construction cranes swing to and fro along Copenhagen’s harbor front, café-latte-lifestyle apartments spring up in Ørestad, and the new Danish Radio town dives headlong into budget overspend, one lot of land in Copenhagen remains conspicuously vacant. One side of Njalsgade, running between Islands Brygge and Amager, is equipped with a new metro station, prim canals and a university campus boasting designer accommodation that will be the envy of students the world over. The other side is in a serene state of decay. Corrugated steel roofs rust and slowly cave in over the burnt-out carcasses of what were once mechanics workshops. This inconspicuous stretch of land is the center of one of the country’s most controversial debates. Since 1992 the land has been earmarked by the City Council for the construction of Denmark’s first purpose-built mosque. After 15 years, what has long been no more than a bureaucrat’s zoning plan is finally very close to becoming a reality.
Considering that the country is home to 170,000 worshipping Muslims, it might seem surprising that no mosque has ever been built, as such, on Danish soil. Denmark’s 50 mosques are all appropriated spaces, which are typically small and specific to the many fractional Muslim groups here. Turks and Iraqis, Pakistanis and Moroccans, Sunnis and Shiites worship in different venues on the fringes of the city. Finding a common language, let alone creed, once seemed like an insurmountable barrier. Curiously, it was the notorious Mohammed cartoons published in Jyllands-Posten newspaper (The Jutland Post) that was to change this situation. Less than two years after the international crisis that those cartoons provoked, the umbrella organisation, the Muslim Council of Denmark, has brought together over 50,000 Muslims, from dozens of different Muslim groups. Furthermore Copenhagen’s city mayor is pressing for a mosque to be built as soon as possible, and for the first time, Denmark faces the realistic prospect of having two major mosques built in the near future.
I spoke to Abdul Wahid Pedersen, one of the main spokesmen of the Muslim Council of Denmark, to find out what he thought this prospect could mean for the Islamic community here. “Initially it would be a signal of acceptance and inclusion into society. Secondarily, it would help in uniting Muslims even more,” Pedersen stated. Abdul is a Dane who converted to Islam, and in 1997 became the first Imam to deliver a sermon in Danish.
The Struggle to Find a Language
Language is a problem that any newcomer to Denmark will be bitterly familiar with. Danish is reportedly the second most difficult language in the world to pick up, second only to Chinese. It is not surprising that many Muslim groups in Denmark choose to worship with others who share their mother tongue. But as Abdul points out, the problem of language when proposing Denmark’s first mosque is also an architectural one.
“If you ask the Muslims who have come to Denmark from abroad, and if you ask the large majority of Muslims born and raised here, they would say a mosque has to look like a mosque. It should have a dome, it should have minarets, it should have a classical ‘Islamic’ design. They don’t realize that the minaret is just an old-fashioned loud speaker,” Abdul jokes.
Architects involved in making mosque proposals in Denmark have to balance the need to make a building that represents the tenets of Islam, with avoiding the danger of further alienating the Muslim worshippers from the general public by making architecture that seems misplaced in Denmark.
The architects C.F. Møller have faced this issue head-on in their ambition to create a thoroughly modern mosque and Islamic center in Århus, Denmark’s second largest city. A condition of taking on the project was that they wouldn’t be able to simply transplant the Blue Mosque to Århus, beautiful though it might be. Instead, as project architect Tom Danielsen explained, the mosque needed to be, “a building that comes from Danish soil with Danish building techniques and as a result, establishes a dialogue between Danish architecture and Islamic architecture.”
This ambition, to create a new architectural language out of a dialogue between Islamic and Danish traditions, is shared by the two rival architects’ practices that are currently making proposals for the same Copenhagen site on Njalsgade. Those practices are Wenzel+Tuxen Architects and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG).
An Eye on Islam - Making Islam Visible
From a distance, Wenzel+Tuxen’s mosque proposal looks like a large eye. There is no trace of a minaret, nor a dome. The building is designed with the capacity for 3,000 worshippers and consists of an open, elliptical central courtyard enclosed by a crescent-shaped building. The structure of the open interior space is focused towards a single vertical strip window, which faces towards Mecca. I met one of the partners of the firm, Lars Tuxen, to find out more about the proposal. He talked about how he perceives many of the problems of Islamic identity in Denmark being to do with the locations in which worshipping Muslims are in. He refers to the fact that many mosques are on the outskirts of town, in socially-deprived areas with cramped, low-quality buildings. “We wanted to somehow make a building that could take all these small mosques and just wipe them out in one way, and then unify and give them a place from where they can define a whole totally new identity.” Wenzel+Tuxen’s proposal focuses on visibility – both from outside and within.
To outsiders the ‘The Grand Mosque’ is proposed as an iconic building, finished in polished concrete, clad in titanium and made on a much more ambitious scale than the original City Council’s requirement. The mosque would have a strong visual impact on the street, particularly at night when the crescent-shaped building is illuminated by light shining from a low-level perimeter window and reflected in a pool surrounding the mosque, giving the whole structure the appearance that it’s floating. The proposal also includes a cultural center that would be open to the public even when the mosque was closed. Future worshippers could see this as an opportunity. Lars suggests, “This is a unique opportunity for the Islamic community to use the building’s volume and identity to talk to the Danes in a different way.”
The focus on visibility is also a feature within the proposal. The vast open volume of the mosque’s interior stands in marked contrast to the current, small and adapted spaces occupied by Copenhagen’s mosques, spaces that are arguably more vulnerable to manipulation by fundamentalists. The design bears a symbolic resemblance to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon project – the essential idea in both being to make people feel visible in an effort to eliminate dangerous and subversive behaviour. The Imam’s offices are placed in a raised position at the center of the eye, as it were, of the mosque and therefore offer views across the entire space. The project has had considerable support from the Tabah Foundation, an Abu-Dhabi based Islamic consultancy firm that promotes unity amongst moderate Muslims.
It is likely that they will be able to raise the funds to foot the 3.2 billion kroner bill (427 million euros). They have also held several meetings with The Muslim Council of Denmark. One of the questions that faces Wenzel+Tuxen’s proposal is whether such a large group of Islamic worshippers would want to use the mosque together. One man that is sceptical of that possibility, and suggests instead a more flexible space that could be used in shifts by different denominations is Ole Schrøder from BIG architects. Ole is the project architect for another mosque proposal for the Njalsgade site.
A Mosque as Part of Our Landscape
BIG architects have been working longer than Wenzel+Tuxen on the Njalsgade site. Unlike Wenzel+Tuxen, they designed for a number of different programmes including a cinema, a hotel, a bazaar and a large amount of housing as well as the mosque.
“The focus of the project is integration,” Ole states. He starts by showing me the Copenhagen City Coat of Arms, which dates back to 1661. BIG have divided it up into its constituent elements. “We tried to break the ‘Da Vinci Code’ of Copenhagen,” he explains. Above the towers are what Ole points out as the multicultural constituents of the Star of David and the sickle moon and star of Islam. “It’s all already there!” he enthuses.
BIG’s proposal for the Njalsgade site looks like an architectural interpretation of an Alpine landscape, with tapering peak-like towers. Surprisingly, it’s a landscape inspired from a more prosaic source - Copenhagen’s municipal restrictions. The forms are generated from the principle that building height regulations in Copenhagen are relative to the distance one builds from adjacent buildings. The architects found out the maximum volume of space they would be allowed to occupy, and then modelled their proposal to make best use of that. The process was a creative exercise in rule-bending. The mosque is incorporated within this volume. “The mosque should be some kind of integrated element in this urban neighbourhood,” explains Ole. It is dwarfed by a hotel building along side it. But as he points out, “It is the smallest building from the outside and yet has the biggest volume on the inside.” The mosque’s tower is orientated towards Mecca and has twisted lamella façades that generate five different lighting conditions during the course of the day corresponding to the five calls to prayer. At night the façade acts as a beacon ‘semi public façade’ onto the street.
BIG’s designs are popular with the municipality and the Islands Brygge community. However they have not yet entered serious negotiations with potential Muslim clients, preferring to reach a firm solution for the planning of the whole site first. Meanwhile, Wenzel+Tuxen’s approval by the Tabah foundation should promise a strong financial grounding to their project. On the other hand, the current owners will not grant them use of the Njalsgade site. As the Muslim Council strengthens and both the architects and the council press for progress, the state of deadlock cannot last long.
The ways that these two rival practices are attempting to define Islamic architecture in Denmark illustrates the complexity of a global identity crisis. Both proposals illustrate a double attitude. On one side proudly promoting the tenets and traditions of an ancient faith, on the other trying to adapt and find new space within a society from which that faith has grown alienated.
August 2007