Copenhagen is Diversifying

By: Ehsaan Mesghali

Since 2007 various entities within the extended Copenhagen community were striving to build a “Grand Mosque of Copenhagen.” As with most large-scale cultural/institutional projects a competition was held for design proposals and from the submission pool various winners were selected. Copenhagen is an interesting place within the context of the Muslim community in Europe, so much so that even The New York Times ran an article on their website titled, “Push to Build Mosques is met with Resistance,” in 2009.

There’s no denying that various forces within the Danish political and social sphere have a tense relationship with the Muslim Danish community (we all remember the Danish Cartoon fiasco back in 2005). Therefore history simply isn’t on the side of the growing congregations within the city of Copenhagen. Regardless, Copenhagen is sure to receive not one but two Grand Mosques within the next several years (a large Shiite congregation has already approved plans to build a center in a relatively industrial quarter of town on the site of a former factory) and a Sunni congregation has started the process by acquiring a site with the help of Abu Dhabi-based Muslim consultancy group, the Tabah Foundation.

Although a brewing institutionalized Islamophobia is simmering all across Europe (with France recently banning public prayer and the wearing face coverings), Denmark is quite the extreme case study. Immigrant hate among the people is one of the main factors in the propulsion of the Danish People’s Party, which more or less ran on a nationalistic platform of re-establishing Denmark as entirely “Danish.” They’ve successfully passed new legislation in their tenure that makes it much harder to obtain citizenship or even enter the country in the first place. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that this social disconnect with Islam is what propelled various groups to work together to make the Grand Mosque become a reality.

But as always the building of a new mosque brings with it the challenges of funding, the lingering question in the heads of Muslims and Danes alike is one all too common: “Who’s paying for it?” In the case of the Shite congregation its quite obvious the Danish Parliament immediately assumed the Iranian Regime had something to with it. The obvious parallel with the Sunni Grand Mosque is the lingering question of Saudi Arabia, equally demonized by European leadership for extensive funding of Grand Mosques all across Europe. With that said, proponents within Danish society exist as well, for example the deputy mayor has defended the rights of Muslims to build places of worship on various occasions, citing that synagogues and churches exist in harmony with Danish life and mosques should be no different.

Enter BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), one of the loudest firms working in architecture today. Led by the young and often idealized Bjarke Ingels, they’ve seemed to score more commissions in recent years than some firms do their entire lifetime. If there were a Kobe Bryant of Architecture (before he wore the number 24) it would be Ingels. In other words, young, talented, with various achievements under his belt, but still having a lot to prove (mind you he use to work for the current Michael Jordan of architecture, journalist gone “starchitect” Rem Koolhaas). Bjarke’s plan took the simple project of the mosque and went “BIG” with it (no pun intended). With very little details released and no official post on BIG’s projects page, the renderings and brief suggest a massive development with various residential and non-Islamic programming alongside the mosque. The idea being that the center is more of a cultural hub for Islam and Muslims rather than a traditional Mosque development (It also might be worth checking out BIG’s confirmed project in Albania, the new Mosque and Museum of Religious Harmony in Tirana).

The interesting twist in the history of the project however reveals that BIG originally came in second after the judge’s voting to little-known Danish firm Wenzel-Tuxen’s more traditional solution. They took only the initial program described in the brief and sculpted an elegant yet simple crescent inspired glowing beacon. I spoke with Lars Tuxen and the latest new suggests that the judges have recently reverted to the BIG proposal, not surprisingly for issues of finance. When your mosque makes money (through non-mosque programming for sale or rent), you’re far less likely to rely on external (and often times questionable) funding. BIG succeeded in selling not only architecture, but financial independence. In their summary BIG clearly highlighted their social design agenda as well, with Bjarke Ingles saying “our purpose was to design a Danish mosque as an interpretation of the Islamic architectural and cultural tradition adjusted to the Danish context.” With one grand sweeping move, I feel the Grand Mosque of Copenhagen became a little more…Danish.

All images courtesy of Wenzel-Tuxen and Bjarke Ingels Group.