NEW SACRED SPACE Chartres Cathedral in France is the "thought of the middle ages made visible," according to art historian, Emile Male. Through sculpture, stained glass windows, and high arches, it is understood as encapsulating an essence of the Christian spiritual mind of the time. Today, in an increasingly secularized world confronted with diversity, confusion, and a continued decline in church attendance, is there still a need for sacred architecture? If so, what is its contemporary expression? — Published 2007.0509
	POSTCARD FROM CORDOBA Dear ArchitectureWeek, The Great Mosque of Cordoba, Spain (also known as La Mesquita) is a famous architectural and cultural collage. It is a dizzying blend of Moorish arches and Gothic spires, frequently illuminated by the flashbulbs of hoards of tourists. — Published 2006.0118
	POSTCARD FROM PORTO-NOVO Dear ArchitectureWeek, Porto-Novo, the capital of Benin in West Africa, is searching for its lost identity as development presents conflicts between historic preservation and a quest for modernism. The city's urban heritage includes vernacular and colonial, but the most interesting buildings, according to Gérard Tognimassou, a teacher from the Ecole du Patrimoine Africain, a school for the preservation of the African cultural heritage, are those that reveal "a great craftsmanship in the fusion between the Brazilian and the African styles." — Published 2005.0907
	URBAN WORLDS MEETING The UIA XXII World Congress of Architecture was held in the historic city of Istanbul, Turkey in July 2005. The week-long conference, with the theme Cities: the Grand Bazaar of ArchitectureS, stimulated ideas about designer responsibility and about how new architecture might be conceived for the 21st century. — Published 2005.0824
	MODERN MOSQUE "It doesn't look like a mosque," said the Muslim woman when I asked for street directions to the Assyafaah Mosque in Singapore. Designed by Singapore-based Forum Architects, the mosque's architecture breaks with tradition. "It's modern," said the woman. — Published 2005.0803
	POSTCARD FROM KHIRKI VILLAGE Dear ArchitectureWeek, Khirki Village, a small "urbanized village" to the south of New Delhi, conceals Khirki Mosque, one of the city's most famous archaeological monuments. Notable for its unusual architectural style, the mosque's roof has four large openings, creating courtyards for light to penetrate into the monumental, red, sandstone building. The most dramatic views are from the roof — where a vast landscape of domes creates a forbidden playground for local children and breathtaking views of the surrounding village. The village takes its name from the mosque — khirki means "lattice windows." There are over 40 of these intricate stone screens on the exterior of the building. — Published 2005.0119
	AGA KHAN AWARD FOR ARCHITECTURE 2004 Made of mud, sand, stone, glass, and steel, scaled from tiny to immense, designed for living, working, learning, and worshipping, a select collection of projects reveals a "comprehensive approach adopted to discover, understand, and explain the challenges of architecture in the Muslim world as it confronts modernity in all its diversity." — Published 2004.1201
	WEST AFRICAN ADOBE Too often, when people in the West think of African architecture, they imagine nothing more than a mud hut — a primitive vernacular remembered from an old Tarzan movie. Why this ignorance to the richness of West African buildings? Possibly it is because the great dynastic civilizations of the region were already in decline when the European colonizers first exposed these cultures to the West. — Published 2004.0225
	FAITH IN ARCHITECTURE Each year, Faith & Form magazine and the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art, & Architecture recognize outstanding design in completed projects through the Religious Art & Architecture Awards program. This year's winners, marking the start of the new millennium, reflect the wealth of activity in the design and construction of sacred spaces throughout the United States for faith traditions well established in this country, as well as those just getting a foothold. — Published 2001.0905
	ARCHITECTURE FOR THE GODS Recent religious architecture in the Americas appears at first to have no unifying theme, except for the fact (of course) that this architecture is for the gods. There is certainly no agreement on style: here you will find a bit of everything—Traditional, Historicist, Classical, Modern, and everything that has come after Modern, and is still coming. The gods, it appears, are much more relaxed about the sanctity of a proper style than your average architect is. — Published 2000.1220

Mosques