Faith and the Built Environment: Architecture and Behaviour in Islamic Cultures. - book reviews

Architectural Review, The, Oct, 1996 by Jim Antoniou

Edited by Suha Ozkan. Lausanne: Comportements. 1996. Sfrs35, - US$30

This slim volume on Islam and the built environment edited by Suha Ozkan, the urbane Secretary General to the Secretariat of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture prize is part of a series on Architecture and Behaviour. Contributors include an impressive array of Award gurus.

To Ismail Serageldin, `... architecture seeks to express the boundaries between the public and the private'. In putting across this perspective, he perceives that the scale, volumes, sequencing of spaces and sense of discovery when moving through the built environment are where the search begins for links between architecture and human behaviour.

On the other hand, for Dogan Kuban, forms are transient; only Allah is eternal. But he points out that `Allah is also formless'. Forms survive because they are precarious. If a few inscriptions on the walls can turn Hagia Sophia into an Islamic building, then perhaps in a similar way, a clock or a car can also become Islamic. In any case, one can make a case for Islamic driving.

Charles Jencks, a neonomian voice in the Award process is seeking what he calls `a third way': a new path between fundamentalism and Westernisation, between Sufi and Gucci. He fears that `... a modernising process which is too fast and unbalanced can actually lead to its supposed antagonism, fundamentalism'. Yet, life in the slow lane is not a serious option for Islam, any more than it is for China, India or even Russia.

Inevitably, space is limited to develop so many illusive concepts about faith and the built environment. However, this small book raises many serious questions that need positive answers in a period of rapid change.