Formal Characteristics of the Architectural Type of contemporary Mosques within the concept of Topology

Abstract

Mosques could be considered as one of the most powerful architectural types throughout historical ages. With their highly symbolic formal legacy, Mosques  play an essential role in providing the Islamic city with its special identity. Nevertheless, the advent of digital technology and its ubiquity at different levels of architectural design marked the emergence of new tendencies in the Architecture of Mosques, represented by various models added to the storage of this architectural type. Consequently a review of these tendencies would be needed, aiming at pointing out the formal transformations and new suggested characteristics.

The paper investigates the surviving and the disappearing formal components of  the Mosque Type, and reviews the different ways they are contemporarily  employed within the notion of  Topology in Architecture. This is achieved through the study and analysis of several examples of contemporary mosques , with comparison to the development of the formal components undergone by the Mosque type.