A Geodesic Mosque for the 20th Century

from inside outside magazing, oct/nov 1984, pp20--22, a description of a Mosque I built in the 1970's. - Vyom

When the 5,000 Muslims of Jittursuguds, a small town (pop. 50,000) on the Bombay-Calcutta mainline in Orissa's Sambalpur district, empowered their community's president for 1975-77 Sadr-e-Birideri Mohammed Zatur Haji Saheb Samad, to organise the rebuilding of their old mosque, no one had an inkling that Allah had settled for the latest in 20th century architecture. At the end of his term, as the Haji Saheti ceremoniously handed them the key to their new mosque, the Brethren found glass substituting for plaster, aluminum instead of brick and mortar and 'see-through' structural elements of steel frames in the place of rock and boulder, a feature which made them aptly rename the edifice as Masjid-e-Hadeed.

And to their unexpected delight, the Faithful also discovered that the mosque no longer 'belonged' only to those who came in to pray five times a day! Proud Jharsuguidians, most of them Hindus, never fail to show off Masjid-e-Hadeed to their out of town guests with proprietary elan. And the mosque marvelers return impressed.

Exulted Dilip Panda, Orissa PWD's new, silver haired, Canada trained, Chief Engineer, when he first saw it, 'I didn't realise you could do such things here. It's a show piece all right!" And, when she chanced upon it during a private visit to India in 1981, Ms. G. Kunze, a Vienna trained UN official, wowed, "First Konarsk! And now this--a mosque with a geodesic dome in the land of the Hindu Lord Kagarinam!) Buckminster Fuller's ideas do get around for sure."

Said Dr. V V Jayaraman, sober professor who has the civil engineering department of the University College of Engineering at Burla, "The mosque is on the annual alumni itinerary of study tours. We were most happy to have provided encouragement to the architect."

Thread-like struts and octet truss

To the uninitiated visitor, though, Masjid-e-Hadeed, with its 'woven' rather than 'hewn' look, is straight out of Ripley's Believe it Or Not. Three of its walls are transparent! The massive roof, with its aluminum dome, appears as if floating unsupported. From the outside, the slender struts of the octet truss--no thicker than a child's little finger--with which the entire rectilinear portion is made, bemuse the eye and one has to peer through the intricacies to peep inside. On the inside, with the thread-like struts in silhouette, the truss acquires the texture of gossamer and muslin to subdue the harsh daylight coming in through the transparent glazing in which the walls are encased. The honeycombed mirror ceiling and the dome's aluminum diffuse and distribute this subdued light to create a cool, clean, quiet, crepuscular suffusion within the praying sanctum. Stained glass, used on the seven sliding doors and on the northern and southern friezes, lends a pleasing, bewitching hue to the hush, its luminescent, multicoloured glow casting a miasmatic spell.

The octet truss of the west wall, on the outside, is covered with only 35 mm of cement mortar; and, on the inside, it is clad in beige "Cali-Clad' to lend the marble and gold Imam's mihrab a solemn sobriety. A decorative chandelier is suspended within the concavity of the dome and its inner rim has panels on which words from the Koran are inscribed. The flooring is of light green mosaic ties with traditional motifs.

Masjid-e-Hadeed's unusual azangah is atop a giant icosahedron with easy approach steps welded to its steel edges. A small geodesic canopy, filled with loudspeakers, shelters the muezzin whose call to prayer reaches the farthest corners of the town. The huge dome, surrounded by an angle iron service frame, is made from one-hundred, self-locking ridged aluminum diamond shapes. The dome is topped off by a dodecahedron which conceals a vent through which hot air can escape. The mosque has a single minar after the fashion of the holy mosque in Mecca. It rises up majestically in a crescent shape from the corbets of the octet parapet. One only wishes there was more space around the mosque so that the proportional harmony of all its parts could also be perceived by the visitor, as well as the devotee.

Even though Masjid-e-Hadeed was built very recently, it has already found a place in local legend and lore. Vyom Akhil, its architect, believes that the concepts and techniques used for its construction can have much wider applications in the design and building of the enclosures need in our country.

Architect's comments

Initially, a brick and lime mortar, flat roofed, 4x7 metre mosque of uncertain age was to be strengthened for a dome. When it was impossible to do so without access to the old foundations, the problem became less simple. The expertise--equal to building anew--and the inconvenience would have yielded no extra space for the growing population.

The restated problem required the maximising the praying space by building around the old mosque. But then, trench digging would have endangered the old mosque as well as the neighbouring houses. There was no adequate bedrock under the ground and the soil was known to have a tendency to swell up during the monsoon and contract in the summer.

The Sadr-e-Biradari showed exemplary boldness (and faith in the will of Allah) in accepting the octet truss as the structural solution to the problem. The strength, economy, speed and precision of the concept as it became evident during its execution further encouraged the community to accept an unconventional, yet highly functional decor. Even the dome, initially desired in reinforced concrete, could eventually be executed with a lighter material. Lastly, the satisfying success of the project helped forge durable human bonds amongst all concerned.

Client

The Muslim community of the township of Jharsuguda, District Sambalpur, Orissa. Sadr-e-Bradan, Haji Mohammed Zahar Samad.