Cambridge Mosque
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- Mill Rd, CB1 Cambridge, Great Britain
Designed to be truly inclusive, sustainable, safe, secure and respectful of its neighbourhood, the new Mosque for Cambridge will be a landmark building which will inject new life into the Mill Road area of Cambridge, and become a community as well as a spiritual centre.
The new Mosque will accommodate a congregation of up to 1000 men and women. In addition to the Mosque’s dedicated areas (ablution, teaching, children’s area, morgue) there will be a café, teaching area and meeting rooms for use by the local Muslim and non-Muslim communities alike. The design draws its inspiration from ‘the Garden of paradise’ and water – the source of all life to create a calm ‘oasis’, with the ‘trees’ set out on a generous 7.8 x 7.8 metre grid forming the main mosque structure. The prayer hall is the heart of the building, organized around the mihrab with the principal dome above it. Between the structural ‘trees’ within the prayer hall, soft natural light filters in through circular glass domes. New cypress trees create a new permeable green edge around the building.
The façade of the complex will be completed in brick, complementing the materials already used in the area. The internal decoration for the project will be overseen by Professor Keith Critchlow, emeritus professor at the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, and expert on Islamic art and sacred architecture. Green issues have been paramount in the design. The building will be naturally lit, very well insulated and heated and cooled using energy efficient and locally generated energy from ground source heat pumps.