Interior Design Blog

This 'vanishing' design strategy was created as a 'developer's tool' for integrating spiritual space within new urban developments in the Middle East. The Vanishing Mosque is designed as an urban plaza to evoke a symbiotic and spatial experience between buildings. Retail, cultural venues, apartments, hotels, and deep shaded arcades define the edges of the plaza. This plaza space is used exclusively for prayer during Salat, which occurs five times over the course of a day. During the rest of the day and evening it is open to the public as a social space for lounging and meeting.

The driving design of the mosque is based on centuries-old design principles.

Qibla (orientation to Mecca): The city grid around the mosque is disrupted by a powerful gravitational force, warping the ground plane, skewing facades, and forging a forced perspective view in the direction of Mecca. The arches of the colonnades on the building facades get progressively smaller in the direction of Mecca to make them appear more distant than they actually are.

Infinity: 'The Vanishing Mosque' gestures to infinity with optical illusion. Diminishing column sizes and the subtle scaling of marble tiles extend the view to infinity within a finite space.

Light: White marble saw-tooth facades and floor contrast with deep arcades to create rich gradients of shadow in natural and artificial light.

Community: The inside of 'The Vanishing Mosque' is its outside. Its community extends to the limits of the city at large, creating a sense of shared ownership, collective identity, and deep roots that connect spiritual life to modern urban living.

The Vanishing Mosque design will be commissioned and built in the UAE by Traffic and its affiliates.