Hraztan Zeitlian's Project for Saudi Arabia wins 2006 American Architecture Award

“The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design” announced in September 2006 that STRUERE?s Hilal (Half Moon) project, a polemical competition entry for the architectural design of the Headquarters Building for the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia was chosen as a recipient of the prestigious 2006 American Architecture Award. Hilal was chosen along with twenty two other entries from several hundred submissions to the Museum?s Award Program by US and international architecture firms. Other winners included such firms as Herzog & De Meuron, SOM, Michael Maltzan Architecture, etc.

Why this project matters:

In this post-9-11 age of the conflict of civilizations, this western project for an Islamic institution is an important critical engagement of Islamic culture in imagining a new emergent architecture for the 21st century. The project embodies the very type of much needed cultural engagement and dialogue that leads to mutual understanding and enrichment between cultures in lieu of conflict.

??????

This building is designed as an abstract reading of Islamic Culture understood as a movement that has historically given tremendous impetus to the development of sciences and technology.?

The building is shaped in the form of the Islamic symbol of the Half Moon or Hilal coupled with the Nejme or Star.

Another powerful Islamic cultural symbolism is embodied in the shaping of the building: that of the Mihrab Niche.? Historic Islamic Architecture has left us with abundant examples of Mosques with the Monumental Mihrab Niche motif flanked by two Minaret Towers.? ?This building reinterprets the Mihrab motif as a Window: The Mihrab as a window open to the entire world? states Hraztan Zeitlian, Design Principal of STRUERE.

The building design reinvigorates the decorative impetus of Islamic Architecture in the design of this building.? ?We found special inspiration in the traditional Islamic Mashrabiy?ya decorative sun-control screens?, says Hraztan, ?We reinterpreted these into a screen that covers the entire Headquarters building as an exoskeletal steel structure.? The screen is the structural cross-bracing of the dual tube system that constitutes the?structure of the?two wings of the Headquarters building.? In this fashion we fused Ornament and Structure.?

While Hilal was sadly not the winning entry to the Headquarters Building Competition itself, the fact that it was selected for the 2006 American Architecture Awards underlines its power as a conceptual piece of architecture.