Muqarnas Pavilion

During the summer of 2022, New South was invited to present an outdoor installation on the terrace of the CIVA (Brussels). The Muqarnas Pavilion reflects upon the sacred and its meaning for public space and life. Can new forms of shared guardianship in the urban realm allow for sustainable practices in our cities? The restoration of a sacred covenant between people, places and the environment establishes a framework for the creation of value outside the logic of the developer-led speculation that so heavily conditions our contemporary urban environments.

Muqarnas are a decorative molding applied to a ceiling vault, common to many local variants of traditional Islamic architecture. We transform the Muqarnas from a decorative item into a cutting edge structural system developed in collaboration with both engineers and crafts-people. Formed by interlocking pieces, it is designed using parametric computational tools and fabricated in industrial grade ceramic. The half cupola positioned on the terrace of CIVA aims to trigger a conversation around sacred architecture as a field for invention, and centering narratives originating from the Global South. In secular societies, the sacred has all but disappeared from the urban realm, often confined to specific, socially isolated, topologically remote, and relatively empty spaces. Muqarnas is a call for cities to reinvest in the notion of the sacred, in order to bring about processes of regeneration, care and sanctuarisation of the built and natural environment.

Muquarnas is a collaboration between New South, Paris based structural engineer Radhi Ben Hadid and Gorbon Ceramics in Istanbul, that aims to reestablish building innovation as central to contemporary Islamic architecture. This work is a study for a larger project — the construction of a mosque in the 11th arrondissement in Paris.

From June to September 2022, the pavilion provided a stage for debates, performances, education and encounters at the CIVA in Brussels. In early 2025, the pavilion will be installed in a new permanent home at the ENSA Saint-Etienne, with the support of the Graham Foundation.

The pavilion sparks dialogue on sacred space as a site of invention, biodiversity, and coexistence—foregrounding voices and knowledge from the Global South.

“This project, built with the students of ENSA Saint-Étienne, questions—beyond full-scale experimentation—the influence of architectures and knowledge from the South in contemporary architectural discourse. It is also an opportunity to open a conversation with the students on the relationship between profane and sacred, ornament and function, coexistence between human and non-human.” — Meriem Chabani