Speirs and Major Associates
We often get interesting submissions to Dirty Mouse, and this one for lighting architects Speirs and Major Associates is terrific. They sent us a few shots of the new mosque in Abu Dhabi. The mosque is named after Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nayhan, and is a building of extraordinary dimensions: it is the largest mosque in the Emirates and the third largest worldwide, featuring the biggest dome of a mosque in the world
In keeping with other religious buildings, the mosque attaches special symbolic importance to light. Within the interior, light appears woven into the fabric of the building, with all equipment hidden from view. Most striking of all is the exterior lighting which appears to ebb and flow according to the lunar-cyclical Islamic calendar. Director Jonathan Speirs explains: “In the same way as the moon has an impact on the tides, we wanted the moon to have an impact on the building. Our idea was to have a building that, by full moon, is lit pristinely with white light, but with a textural quality evocative of clouds slowly drifting in front of a full white moon. As the moon wanes over its 28 day cycle, the lighting grows gradually bluer to signify darkness. On the fourteenth evening the mosque is lit in deepest blue.”
