Abrahamic Family House Adjaye Associates

Table Of Content

• A Closer Look: Inside Abu Dhabi's Abrahamic Family House
• The synagogue
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• First glimpse inside Abu Dhabi's Abrahamic Family House
• Project location
• Why no indoor garden should be without this plant
• Address:Jacques Chirac St - Al Saadiyat Island - Cultural District - Abu Dhabi - United Arab Emirates
• Pope welcomes new UAE committee to promote Human Fraternity

Located on Saadiyat Island – a cultural hub positioned off the coast of Abu Dhabi – the project incorporates three separate houses of worship for the three Abrahamic religions Christianity, Judaism and Islam. As the first purpose-built synagogue in the United Arab Emirates, the synagogue presents a series of architectural thresholds that culminate in a shrouded, sanctified built representation of communal prayer. The multi-layered facade of the Synagogue recalls the Jewish Sukkot festival, where palm trees are harvested and communities build tents in their gardens as designated areas for gathering and eating. The building promotes sequence, layering, and a rhythmic journey that begins with observing, is followed by spiritual ablution, and culminates in prayer. This building has been designed not in service to typology, but in an earnest pursuit to represent its contemporary congregants. Its lofty, vertical vaults uplift its visitors, allowing them to feel enveloped in a space of veneration and historic belief.

A Closer Look: Inside Abu Dhabi's Abrahamic Family House

A baptistry is located beside the church, denoted by a conical form that emerges above the courtyard walls with scattered small windows of light emitting for the interior. Inside, an octagonal room houses a baptismal font, which emerges from the ground in a rough-cut marble form. In addition to ticketed daily guided tours, each house of worship will organise events prevalent to its faith.

The synagogue

Please note The Abrahamic Family House is closed for tours and visitors on Monday. Tours are usually around an hour long and can be booked in either English or Arabic, and you will be accompanied by a Storyteller. The Abrahamic Family House will be a significant milestone if the center becomes a vibrant place for faiths to interact and fellowship. But a milestone is not an endpoint; rather, it marks progress toward a destination. With its opening, the Abrahamic Family House is now a visible landmark in the Middle East for this journey. Outside is a small triangular pool of water to symbolise the Trinity of Christianity and the three Abrahamic faiths.

5 THINGS TO KNOW: Abrahamic Family House - MEP Middle East

5 THINGS TO KNOW: Abrahamic Family House.

Posted: Mon, 26 Jun 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

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Other projects planned for the island include Foster + Partners' long-awaited Zayed National Museum and architect Frank Gehry's Guggenheim museum scheduled to open in 2025. The complex was included in ArchDaily’s list of 23 most anticipated buildings to open in 2023, along with Studio Gang’s Museum of Natural History Expansion in New York, US and OMA’s The Buffalo AKG Art Museum. From the same list, Snøhetta’s Esbjerg Maritime Center in Denmark has already opened earlier this year. Throughout the day, the entirety of the interior is constantly in luminous flux, reminding visitors of their proximity with that which is transcendent and divine. 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.

First glimpse inside Abu Dhabi's Abrahamic Family House

They liked to stay home with their family rather than going out to glamorous events. They played badminton on the lawn and Disney drove his daughters to school every morning, said Regan. The Woking Way house “wasn’t really running hot and cold with celebrities,” added Cline.

Aside from the houses of prayer, the landmark has a baptistery, a purifying bath in Judaism called mikvah and ablution areas. There are four pillars inside the mosque and the Minbar, or the pulpit where the imam stands when he leads the prayer, serves as the fifth, representing the five pillars of Islam. The prayer hall is an intimate space with plenty of light and designed in such a way to allow the sounds of Quran recitals to echo within its walls. Abu Dhabi's Abrahamic Family House, designed by Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye, captures the values shared between all three faiths. "As an architect, I want to create a building that starts to rise above the notion of hierarchical difference and enhances the richness of human life," he added. The three buildings sit atop a one-storey plinth that also features a secular gathering space with a library and exhibition areas known as the Forum, as well as an elevated communal garden that connects the church, synagogue and mosque.

The overriding aim of the Synagogue is to bring people together and the synagogue features a series of interwoven spaces that work in service of human scale interactions. The houses of worship are open for worshippers to practice their respective faiths. He also noted that all materials were sourced from the region, including marbles from Oman, to promote sustainability. Although each building is the same size, a cube of 30 metres, they can hold varying numbers of worshippers. The church can host 300 people seated in pews, the synagogue allows for 200, due to the Bimah in the centre, and the mosque can fit 322 people shoulder to shoulder.

These vaults also heighten the echo inside the mosque, giving prayers a powerful reverberating sound. The church can seat up to 300 people and at the centre of it is a crucifix with no human form to symbolise that it is open to all faiths and denominations. The airy and sun-washed venue was designed by Ghanaian-UK architect Sir David Adjaye.

Pope welcomes new UAE committee to promote Human Fraternity

The Abrahamic Family House celebrates the shared values of Islam, Judaism and Christianity with a mosque, synagogue and church at one site. The Woking Way house was designed by architect Frank Crowhurst, who also contributed to the Walt Disney Co. headquarters in Burbank, Cline said. At 6,400 square feet, it had five bedrooms, a projection room,  library, pool pavilion with dressing rooms and a pool house. Later, the property was subdivided and the original pool became part of the house next door; later owners of the Storybook Mansion added their own pool. The women’s section located on the right side of the mosque is separated by a row of flexible panels that can be adjusted depending on the number of female worshippers.

His Holiness Francis Church is characterised by a facade of towering Omani limestone columns that are positioned from east to west to enhance morning sunlight on the interior, referencing light as a symbol of divinity in Christianity. The Abrahamic Family House is made up of a trio of standalone cubic buildings with flat roofs, each equal in volume but distinguished by their own features including differently sized courtyards. The mosque celebrates both collective congregation and vital provision of privacy. It uniformly gifts users with opportunities to observe the customs of Islamic prayer, once again using articulated thresholds to allow viewing to occur separately to the act of joining. The Abrahamic Family House welcomes visitors and offers a range of engaging experiences, from brief tours to immersive journeys of understanding. Four years later, Muslims, Christians and Jews gathered to inaugurate the three worship centers, each representing one of the three Abrahamic faiths, and a representative from each faith provided inaugural remarks.

The Abrahamic Family House will be a beacon of mutual understanding, harmonious coexistence, and peace among people of faith and goodwill. It consists of a mosque, church, synagogue, and educational center to be built on Saadiyat Island, the cultural heart of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Through its design, it captures the values shared between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and serves as a powerful platform for inspiring and nurturing understanding and acceptance between people of goodwill. The vision for the Abrahamic Family House originated after the signing of the Document on Human Fraternity by Pope Francis and Grand Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb in February 2019.

Mediating between the elements and privacy, an inverted dome and pyramid ceiling within a square form signifies the female and male ablution. But while the center is novel, the UAE has been promoting tolerance for several years. The Abrahamic Family House joins other initiatives, including a special ministry of tolerance, and hosts the Abu Dhabi Forum for Peace. He explained that the names of the three houses of worship recognize the work of the Grand Imam, Pope Francis and Moses Ben Maimon, and “harnesses their teachings to forge a message of goodwill for future generations around the world”. It is an airy and acoustically pristine space defined by floor-to-ceiling windows and a wooden canopy. The altar is slightly elevated and the pews are spacious enough to accommodate up to 300 people.

Nowadays, the home is in use by its owner, as well as for film shoots, special events and occasional tours. The two layers of mashrabiya produce circular spots of sunlight on the cream-coloured carpet. Unlike traditional mosques, the Ahmed El Tayeb Mosque only has four visible pillars but the main arc of the mosque serves as the fifth pillar. Air ducts, meanwhile, are craftily hidden behind the mashrabiya to create a smooth wall.

Three identically sized cubic volumes sit on the podium, unified by their scale and external materiality. They each express themselves differently but share equal external dimensions, with a unifying roof at a shared datum height, ensuring that none of the buildings from the three is more dominant than its counterparts. There is no hierarchy as all three houses of faith (mosque, church and synagogue) are built in the same size — all standing at 30 metres high and spanning 30 metres each in both length and width. The ritual of assembling the Sukkot is celebrated through the rhythmic hierarchy of columns, between which visitors are invited to explore and learn about the Jewish faith.

Interfaith events, from guest lectures to conferences, will be held at The Welcome Centre. All events will be updated on the Abrahamic Family House's website and social media channels. All three houses of worship are similar architecturally and feature stone, water, wood and metal. I can appreciate the Abrahamic Family House's vision, as the garden, which features more than 200 local plants, connects to all three houses of worship. The mosque's exterior is made up of seven arches, reflecting the importance of the number seven in Islam and the seven days of the week with Friday at the centre of the structure. There is no dome but the mosque's main internal architecture are nine ascending vaults that form a sail at their apex.

“As an architect I want to create something that enhances the richness of human life,” he said in a statement. The three pillars of the Abrahamic religions are honoured in the form of three striking structures — a mosque, a church and a synagogue — all leading to a central garden under which will sit a museum and centre for education. Entry to the multi-faith place of worship, which houses a mosque, synagogue and church, will be free of charge, but bookings must be made in advance.