Croydon Mosque’ prayer wing (Credit: Courtesy of Benedict O’Looney Architects)
Harun Nasrullah
Croydon Mosque’ has been shortlisted for the Community & Faith Project Category at prestigious Architects Journal Architecture Awards.’
The mosque has been shortlisted for the design of its newly opened women’s and children’s wings at their site in Croydon, South London.
This project is the third phase in the development of this mosque site and was designed by the Peckham-based, Benedict O’Looney Architects, working closely with the Croydon Mosque Committee. This recent project follows the same architect’s completion of new prayer rooms and minarets for the Peckham Mosque.
At the heart of this project is a double-height prayer room on the upper two floors.
This bright day-lit space is framed in exposed laminated timber in harmony with the building’s welcoming & low energy design. New top-lit men’s bathing areas to the ground level of this wing create a second route to the mosque’s main prayer hall.
Externally, the new wing uses traditional tiled arches and colourfully banded brickwork from Sussex and Surrey brickworks.
A significant part of the project was the completion of Britain’s longest tiled Quranic frieze in Arabic script, formed in glazed terracotta. The frieze is 50 feet long and 6 feet tall.This Quranic frieze was made by local ceramicist Lubna Chowdhary.
The new wing’s lift shaft forms the base of an eye-catching new minaret topped with a hand-made zinc dome covered in gold leaf. This new wing takes inspiration from traditional Ottoman and Mughal Islāmic architecture and references London’s brick civic architecture from the Arts & Crafts period.