Architettura Sacra | C&H Engineering Consultants

We imagined a space that might welcome people of all faiths for their prayers and meditation. The main element of our project will be water. The sacredness of water is an element that unites all religions. From the oldest religious rituals to the contemporary ones, water has taken on a symbolic role as the dream of the Divine in a transposition that touches, in some cases, metaphysics. In this landscape of sand and dry grass, the scarcity of water or the difficulty in gaining this precious liquid, becomes the main challenge of the project. The search for water will be compared to the search for faith.

A rectangular plan, with the short front facing towards Mecca, will cut the Project Area in two squares where people can meet and take refreshment. The internal area will be divided into regular spaces: prayer spaces, spaces for emergencies, and spaces for services. The regularity ends, In height, instead. The idea is to imagine that God pulls the building and that building moves up to God's hand.

The building will be made using biodegradable local materials and local builders who will use their sophisticated knowledge of working with clay bricks, bamboo and straw. These traditional materials will be combined with an innovative material, a special bio-plastic fiber to capture water.

The building is based on natural phenomena such as gravity, condensation and evaporation. Collecting the fog is not a new idea, but it goes back to thousands of years in the arid regions. In conditions of humidity that are created in the transition from night to day, the vertical structure of the system will be able to collect potable water from rain, fog and dew on the mesh and canalise by gravity. The water will then be conveyed into a central tank and distributed through channels outside the building. Also, the slope of the roof will convey the rainwater inside the building that will nourish the central tree which in turn will encourage the formation of humidity in the air.