The New Mosques: Islamic Centers in North America

THE KINGSTON ISLAMIC CENTER OF ONTARIO

Another Canadian mosque, the Kingston Islamic Center was opened in 1996 on the former site of a slaughterhouse barn. The land was purchased in 1982 by the Islamic Society of Kingston, an organization in a suburb community mostly composed of students from Queens University. According to their statements on the ISK homepage the organization's purpose in creating the Islamic center was to provide the students with "an anchor, a home away from home". The building includes a prayer hall and community facilities divided by a central entry. The prayer hall is perhaps the most interesting interior space with its five leaning steel structural columns and attached trusses not unlike the wood framing one might find in local barns, but much more sophisticated with the purpose of visually separating the men's prayer space from the women's. Two Islamic features are the dome-topped minaret which sits above the women's prayer space and the mihrab(niche in wall facing Mecca) which is marked by the focus of natural light rather than decoration.

This entire structure, although appearing intentional and deliberate, was actually the result of a lengthy design process. Gulzar Haider, a professor of architecture in Ontario, was originally commissioned to design just a mosque but the lack of private funding and the need to request government funding led to a community social center scheme. The design phase which began in 1988, would infact alter the original designs many times over. Unlike the typical patron-architect relationship one is usually accustomed to hearing about in historical mosque design, one in which only the ruler and architect are involved in the design process, this involved a whole community. Many of the most active members were women. According to Holod in The Contemporary Mosque these members "managed to ensure that there would be a single entrance to the mosque, so avoiding the separation of men from women on arrival, and that women would pray on the same level as the men, rather than be allocated space in a mezzanine or in a basement area" (p.224). In the end the agreement was to have the women pray behind the men but this is a good example of how architecture often so accurately represents a community and their current beliefs and traditions and can even encourage social change. By using a shed-type design that was reminiscent of the local barn architecture of

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