Islam in Iberia

Architectural Review, The, March, 2003 by Martin Meade

In creating a building for Muslims in Portugal, Raj Rewal has drawn upon traditions both of the nation and of traditional Islamic countries. Martin Meade reports on the Ismaili Centre.

The past 15 years have seen the environs of Lisbon succumb to ever denser urban sprawl. Oblivious to the erstwhile picturesque charms of the pine, cork-oak and olive grove-studded landscape which so captivated William Beckford's romantic sensibilities in the 780s, unfettered low- and high-rise development strides relentlessly over hill and dale. This has occurred most noticeably north-west of the city where it has not only crushed the once bucolic horizons of Queluz (the exquisite Rococo summer palace of the Portuguese court), but now encroaches on the Sierra de Sintra itself. Left in the wake of this proliferation. Benfica (its eponymous football stadium apart) has been swamped by a sea of amorphous new 'districts', ring-roads and expressways, what otherwise remained of its identity superseded by the overweening presence of the Colombo Shopping Centre. It is in these uninviting environs surrounded by high-rise apartments. the Avenida Lusiada and the north-south expressway, that one discovers the peaceful hav en of the Lisbon Ismaili Centre, recently completed to designs by Raj Rewal.

Ismaili Muslims, whose hereditary spiritual leader is the Aga Khan, have long-established roots in Europe and the new Centre in Lisbon manifests the cultural self-confidence of a well integrated, prospering immigrant community. The London Ismaili Centre (by architects Casson-Conder) opened in 1983 and, by the 1990s, there were demands for a similar religious and socio-cultural centre on the continent. Sizable Ismaili communities have settled in Spain and, notably, in Portugal which has had an Ismaili national council since 1979 and a branch of the Aga Khan Foundation's Development Network since 1983, both located in Lisbon.

As the Portuguese national council already had plans to acquire the Lisbon site for a permanent place of worship, it was decided the project could be developed effectively for the benefit of the greater Ismaili community in and beyond the Iberian peninsula. Acting on their behalf, the Aga Khan Foundation then invited five architects from different countries and backgrounds to submit designs for the new Centre, among them Raj Rewal's Delhi based practice.

In conjunction with the spiritual core of the Jamatkhana (Prayer Hall), the brief required a social hall, community and multi-purpose areas, suitable premises for the Aga Khan Foundation and the Ismaili Institutional Council, as well as teaching facilities for the Centre's extensive educational, cultural and economic programmes. Moreover, it was stipulated that the Ismaili community should be provided with an architecture that would not only be distinctive but would also merge into and reflect Portuguese urban values, conferring an appropriate sense of place -- something of a tall order given the harsh environment of the site in this new part of Lisbon.

Rewal's concept--using modern technology and functional analysis to devise a novel, composite stone-and-steel lattice framework for his complex of buildings ranged around cloistered courts or patios -- sought to express the link between tradition and modernity, between the Ismaili community and its host country, by fusing Iberian architectural traditions with the iconic geometrical designs that embody the cultural and spiritual canons of Islam. Deemed the most appropriate response to the brief, Rewal's proposal was selected from the five contenders and it has since been refined in detailed discussions with the community's leaders.

Allusions to the morphologies of northern India's rich sedimentation of past civilizations and to resonances encountered elsewhere, around the Mediterranean seaboard for example, have distinguished Raj Rewal's work since the late 1970s (AR August 1987 and October 2002). Exploiting the thematic geometries of urban vernacular traditions as much as temple and later Indo-Moghul architecture, he has developed analogous concepts both in institutional and housing schemes. Devised in rational terms, on the principle of 'change within continuity', they combine new and old techniques and materials to meet functional needs.

The intrinsic merits of local materials -- brick apart, long despised in India on ideological modernist, post-colonial and social grounds -- have undergone a similar, if more cautious reappraisal. Rewal has taken progressive advantage of local red and buff sandstone for his buildings in New Delhi, whether in the form of cladding panels, chip-faced render or, increasingly, as an integral structural component. By comparison with concrete, he says, ancient Indian temples, Fatehpur Sikri (the Emperor Akbar's Palace near Agra) and Lutyens's New Delhi complex all testify to this magificent stone's exceptional weathering and insulation properties. And, what is more, 'it happens that sandstone in India is also the cheapest building material'.