International Architecture Awards Tell a friend
ARCHIVE 2024
International Architecture Awards
Architects: Adjaye Associates
Lead Architect: David Adjaye
Contractor: Zublin Construction
Client: Brunswick Group
Photographers: Dror Baldinger
The Abrahamic Family House in the Saadiyat Cultural District of Abu Dhabi, UAE, is a collection of three religious spaces: a mosque, a church, and a synagogue, all of which sit upon a fourth secular space consisting of a Forum and raised garden. Officially inaugurated in February 2023, the house serves as a community for interfaith dialogue and exchange, nurturing the values of peaceful co-existence and acceptance among different beliefs, nationalities, and cultures. Within each of the houses of worship, visitors can observe religious services, listen to holy scripture, and experience sacred rituals.
The architectural form of each building (the Imam Al-Tayeb Mosque, St. Francis Church, and Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue) is translated from its respective faith, carefully using the lens to define what is similar, as opposed to what is different. Through the power of these revelations, the design emerges as powerful plutonic forms with a clear geometry: three cubes equal in volume (30 meters in each dimension) sitting on a plinth. The narrative of each religion unfolds through various scales‚ from structure to detail‚ and emerges through the elements of creation: water and light. Wrapped in an off-white concrete that references the sand and mountains of the Emirates, the structures are illustrated with colonnades, screens, and vaults to represent their sacred natures, whilst sitting within a unifying garden of native vegetation.
The three houses of worship display a clear visual harmony while unique in architectural articulation and orientation. The mosque is oriented towards Mecca and light filters through the delicate GRP latticework of mashrabiya screens, while four seamless, monolithic columns represent the Islamic notions of stability, order, and fullness and create a vaulting space that orients the visitors towards the mihrab. The only fully opaque wall billows to make room for the simplistic stone mihrab, which is bathed in the patterned light from the screens. The church is oriented towards the rising sun in the East, along with a forest of columns that compose the form to allow light to enter from the exterior. Inspired by the altar of St Peter's Basilica, a canopy of linear timber elements cascades down from the ceiling in a “shower of ecstatic redemption”, above Adjaye Associates-designed oak pews that face a marble altar, ambo, tabernacle, oak credence table, and three chairs that sit on the sanctuary below the crucifix. The synagogue is oriented towards Jerusalem and a series of three V-shaped columns amass to create a screen between the interior and exterior, referencing the overlapping layers of palm fronds on the sukkah‚ a structure used during Sukkot, the Jewish festival of shelter. A bronze mesh tent‚ symbolizing the original tabernacle‚ cascades from a skylight in the ceiling and drapes over the congregation while a stone wall envelopes the base, from which the ark emerges and, along with Adjaye Associates-designed oak seating, faces towards the bimah.
Each house of worship also includes ancillary spaces‚ male and female ablutions, baptistry, and mikveh‚ specific to its specific religious traditions and practices. The fourth space‚ not affiliated with any specific religion‚ serves as a Forum for all people to come together with the collective ambition to convene spatially, through courtyards, a central entrance, a library, and exhibition space, and interpersonally, through community educational and event-based programming. With access to each chamber's courtyard, it is a place of convergence rather than divergence. A destination in itself, the raised garden creates a viewing platform to take in all three religious structures, promoting a sense of harmony and interconnectivity whilst asserting their individualism. Framed by date palms to symbolize entrances and punctuated by planters with regional vegetation and water features for cooling, the garden becomes a climate-moderated space of collective respite. Profound or mundane moments are cultivated throughout, encouraging the celebration of collective history and collective identity at all scales.
