RIYADH: The Diriyah Biennale Foundation on Sunday announced the names of this year’s Al-Musalla Award participants, an international architectural design competition under the Islamic Arts Biennale.
The second edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale will take place in Jeddah from January-May 2025 and is dedicated to the arts of Islamic civilization, connecting its past to its present.
The 2025 edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale will take place in the Western Pilgrims Hall at King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah but will have an expanded focus on Islamic cultural architecture. In its second edition, the Islamic Arts Binneale aims to launch this new award for creating a “musalla” — a small prayer space or mosque.
The competition invites international architects to compete in creating the design of the space, to be built on the biennale site.
The teams selected to partipate include AAU Anastas Engineering Office from Palestine, Sahel Al-Hiyari from Jordan, East Architectural Studio from Lebanon and the UAE, the Saudi company Dabbagh Architectural Engineering, and Asif Khan from the UK.
They were each chosen to participate in the competition based on their past work and proven experience and knowledge in the fields of Islamic art and architecture.
The teams are each required to submit a proposal design for the prayer and gathering space that is versatile, sustainable, and meets all requirements.
There are a few guidelines the participants must follow in the process, including building the space using no less than 50 square meters.
The winner of the award will be announced later this year by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation judging committee which includes Prince Nawaf bin Ayyaf who serves as the chairman of the committee.
He said the award encourages teams to find new ways to integrate the latest building techniques in representing and examining innovative models for architecture while utilizing traditional crafts and time and place.
He added he hopes that the competition will produce an unforgettable landmark, which will be a source of inspiration for others to participate in future editions of the award, celebrating sustainability, creativity, comprehensiveness, and ingenuity in design.
The CEO of the Diriyah Biennale Foundation, Aya Al-Bakri, confirmed that creating a space through the competition calls for innovation that is closely linked to the goal of the foundation, which seeks to implement creative ideas in various fields.
She explained that Al-Musalla Award comes in cooperation with the Abdul Latif Al-Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture, which addresses new ideas for designing mosques around the world and encourages innovative planning, design, and technical ideas that can shape the identity of mosque architecture in the 2st century.
The chosen design will be witnessed by visitors from around the world to the second edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale for four months in the Western Pilgrims Hall in Jeddah.
