Abdullatif Al Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture was established in 2011, it’s targeting the architectural, urban, and technical aspects of mosques all over the world, and It will be awarded to the related designer/architect. The main objective of this award is the development of contemporary design of mosques, throughout a specialized and classified database. Moreover, it encourages the architects to create new mosque’s designs, in which represent mosques in the twenty first century. Generally, the award insures the importance of the twenty first century mosque architecture that perceived and re-produced the soul of the traditional mosque ideas, and conceived by the contemporary mosque concepts as a fundamental message. Therefore, this new message expresses the presence of the contemporary mosque with its architectural and social connection and confirms the importance of the technological and the architectural forms that the mosque should reflect.
The award is triennial; the winning mosques will be awarded based on assessment of an international architectural jurors experienced with mosque architecture, who will relatively evaluate and assign the winning mosques. The candidate mosques will be categorized into three categories; Central Mosques, Jumaa’ Mosques, and local mosques. Yet, there are prizes given to innovations and ideas which helps in developing the concept of mosques in the twenty first century.
The Award was named rewarding its founder and his efforts and history in supporting charities. Nevertheless, it is been managed by an executive committee and a general secretary, where the executive committee nominate jurors of each cycle, and accordingly follow up the assessment process and till assigning the awarded mosques.
Furthermore, a bilingual book of Arabic and English language about each award cycle will be published and distributed worldwide, with full critic and descriptive architectural analysis about the short listed and awarded mosques. This book is usually launched at the special awards trinneial ceremony, in which orgnaized at different cities worldwide.
“Abdullatif Al Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture” cares about the future of mosque architecture; this is the main objective of the Award. Over the years, we have witnessed the construction of numerous mosques that accumulated records of mosques numbers worldwide, and consequently, it contributes to the multiple problems of mosque architecture given the expansion of cities and the complexity of life. The main question that we raised upon initiating this Award were about the possible added value to Mosques architecture, and how we can make mosque architecture rebirth and matching contemporary challenges, let alone adequately tackle them; this building type is pivotal and ‘symbolic’, for it gives our cities their identity. However, we did not consider ‘form’ only, but took into consideration other vital parameters beyond “form” such as urban issues that influence mosque architecture. Urban relations of the mosque with the architectural context is faced with different urban and city planning intersctions, and so this leads us to think about the socio-cultural impact of the mosque and its role in shaping social practices within a local network that binds individuals in the community visually, functionally and emotionally.
– Shaikh Abdullatif Al Fozan
