Khartoum Zen: a place of prayer and meditation for all faiths

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 2007 by Catherine Slessor

This pavilion for meditation and prayer forms part of a centre for cardiac surgery in Khartoum. The centre is run by an Italian humanitarian organisation and the pavilion is also designed by an Italian architect, Venice-based Studio Tamassociati.

Its population polarised on both ethnic and religious lines, Sudan continues to suffer grievously from the excoriating effects of civil war, notably in the Darfur region which has been subject to a particularly brutal form of ethnic cleansing. This backdrop of instability and intolerance presented the young architects with the challenge of how to create an enclave that could be spiritually neutral, yet still evoke a sense of the numinous.

The exterior is dominated by a large reflecting pool, a powerful symbol of physical sustenance in sub-Saharan Africa, which also separates the microcosm of the pavilion from the macrocosm of the hospital and wider world. The pavilion is a simple composition of two impassive white cubes connected by a roof of loosely woven bamboo that gently diffuses the harshness of the sun's glare.

This capacity to temper extremes is at the heart of the project. Though the pavilion acknowledges the pre-eminence of Islam (some 70 per cent of Sudanese are Muslims), overtly religious symbols are removed, so that, for instance, the ablution area is simply a water spray that forms part of the pool. At the pavilion's heart are two trees, a reminder of the transcendental power of nature. The Zen-like quality of the enclosure appealed to the jury, who admired how the architects had addressed the issues of building in such a challenging context. C.S.

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