Rooted Transience
Overview
The inaugural AlMusalla Prize (2025 Edition) was awarded for the design of a modular space for prayer and contemplation open to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Integrating faith, art, and architecture, the musalla will form part of the second edition of the Islamic Arts Biennale—the first Biennale dedicated to the arts of Islamic civilization.
Inspired by the historical, cultural, and architectural significance of the Biennale's iconic site—the SOM-designed and Aga Khan Award-winning Hajj Terminal in Jeddah—the AlMusalla Prize celebrates the ideas of diverse architectural teams from different cultures within the Arab world and beyond.
This publication offers a reflection around diverse practices, by academics, architects and writers.
About the Authors
Faysal Tabbarah
Faysal Tabbarah is the Associate Dean and an Associate Professor of Architecture at the American University of Sharjah. He is also Co-founder of Architecture + Other Things, an architecture and design studio based in Sharjah. Tabbarah’s teaching and research interrogate the potential of activating Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) material and environmental practices to drive innovative contemporary design and building solutions by exploring context-driven modes of production, alternative material systems, and the relationship between environmental and architectural imaginaries. At AUS, Tabbarah teaches core and option design studios, seminars integrate issues of Orientalism and the built and natural environments, computational design seminars, and required structures courses.
Wesam Al Asali
Wesam Al Asali (Syrian/ Spain) is an architect and researcher specializing in building crafts and construction technology. He is an Assistant Professor and Director of Materials and Methods at IE School of Architecture and Design. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2021 and was a Global Fung Fellow at Princeton University (2021–2022) before joining IE University. Wesam’s work explores the histories and applications of scarcity-driven experimentation in vernacular, indigenous, and local construction methods. In practice, he engages with heritage knowledge to develop environmentally sensitive designs. In 2010, he co-founded IWlab, a research hub investigating Syrian ecologies of making and dwelling. In 2020, he co-founded CERCAA, a social enterprise based in Valencia, Spain, dedicated to training architects in local building crafts across Spain and the Middle East. His research and practice have earned multiple awards, including the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) President’s Medal for Research (2021), Clare Hall’s Salje Award for best PhD thesis (2022), and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians’ Founders’ Award (2022). In 2024, he was named a DigitalFutures awardee for the Middle East, and IWlab received the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture.
Hanif Kara
Professor Hanif Kara OBE is a practicing Structural Engineer and Professor in Practice of Architectural Technology at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard. He is recognized for linking design, research, education, and practice. He co-tutored a Diploma Unit at the Architecture Association, London from 2000 to 2004 and was a Visiting Professor of Architectural Technology at KTH Stockholm from 2007 to 2012. As Design Director and co-founder of AKT II (est. 1996), his particular design-led approach and interest in innovative form, pushing material uses, sustainable construction and complex analysis methods have allowed him to work on numerous pioneering projects at the forefront of many challenges facing the built environment.
Khaled Azzam
Khaled Azzam is the Director of The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London. He is an architect by training and maintains his practice through offices in Cairo and Jeddah. He has built houses, schools, mosques, offices, commercial buildings and royal residences. These projects apply the principles of traditional Islamic design and construction techniques, acquired from academic research and practice, with the aim of establishing a contemporary expression for the architecture of the Arab/ Islamic world. The integration of architecture, the arts and education is not only seen in his architectural profession but also in his academic career through the development of education projects, programmes and institutions.
Nasser Rabbat
Nasser Rabbat is the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. His interests include Islamic art and architecture, urban history, heritage studies, Arab history, contemporary Islamic art, and post-colonial criticism. He teaches lecture courses on various aspects of Islamic architecture and seminars on Orientalism and colonialism; Issues in Islamic Urbanism; Historiography of Islamic Architecture; Late Antiquity and the foundation of Islamic architecture; Reading Ibn Khaldun; (Re)constructing Memory; Urbicide; and Balancing Globalism and Regionalism in the Arabian Gulf. Professor Rabbat has published more than a hundred scholarly articles and several books on topics ranging from Mamluk architecture to Antique Syria, 19th century Cairo, Orientalism, and urbicide. His most recent books are Taqiy al-Din al-Maqrizi: Wijdan al-Tarikh al-Masri (2024); Nasser Rabbat: Critical Encounters (2023); Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project (2023); ‘Imarat al-Mudun al-Mayyita (The Architecture of the Dead Cities) (2018), and an online book, The Destruction of Cultural Heritage: From Napoléon to ISIS, co-edited with Pamela Karimi (2016). His co-edited book, Construction as Destruction: The Case of Syria will be published in 2025 by AUC Press. He is currently editing a book on the cultural history of Syria to be published by Edinburgh University Press. His next book project is a history of Mamluk Cairo, which is under contract with AUC Press.
Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop
Noura Al Sayeh-Holtrop is an architect and curator based in Bahrain. She was the co-curator of ‘Reclaim’, Bahrain’s first participation at the 12th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010 that was awarded a Golden Lion, and the Deputy Commissioner General for Bahrain’s National Pavilion since the Expo Milan in 2015. Since 2015, she has been heading the ‘Pearling, Testimony of an Island Economy’ UNESCO World Heritage project, which was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the 2019 cycle. She has built a number of temporary and permanent installations, and worked as an architect in Jerusalem, Amsterdam and New York. Her work has been exhibited internationally at several biennales and exhibitions of which the Lisbon Triennale, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the London Design Festival, the Seoul Biennale for Architecture and Urbanism and the Jeddah Islamic Art Biennale. She is currently at the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (BACA) as Advisor for Heritage Projects, where she is responsible for overseeing the planning and implementation of cultural institutions and museums, as well as advising on urban rehabilitation strategies. She holds a Master’s Degree in Architecture from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and is a board member of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, Palestine.
Ziad Jamaleddine
Ziad Jamaleddine is a co-founder of L.E.FT Architects (New York/Beirut) and an assistant professor at Columbia University, GSAPP. He is the recipient of the Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York (2010), and was selected as one of the Nine Arab American Architects You Should Know by the AIA (2024). Jamaleddine is a practitioner and scholar with a research focus on mosque architecture. His writings have been published in Places Journal (2020), Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World (Brill, 2024), and International Journal of Islamic Architecture (Intellect, 2025). His research and design work has been exhibited at Oslo Architecture Triennale (2016), Milan Architecture Triennale (2018), Sharjah Architecture Triennale (2019), and most recently Jeddah Islamic Art Biennale (2023). L.E.FT was selected in 2025 to the AD100, The Best Designers in the Middle East and North Africa. L.E.FT’s work includes Shakib Arslan Mosque, Lebanon (2017), winner of the Interfaith Design (AIA) & Partners of Sacred Places Award (2018), and the Al Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture (2020), and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practices, Vassar College (2023), winner of the Interfaith Design (AIA) & Partners of Sacred Places Award: Adaptive Re-Use (2024).
Nawaf Bin Ayyaf
Nawaf Bin Ayyaf is a Senior Advisor for H.E. the Vice Minister of Culture, Prince Nawaf Bin Abdulaziz Bin Ayyaf is an urbanist with a career trajectory primarily focused on Diriyah’s urban development, built environment and urban morphology. Bin Ayyaf obtained a Master of Architecture Studies degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and then a second Master of Design Studies degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He has practiced multi-scaled urban development in settings as wide-ranging as the World Bank Group, consulting firms Accenture and CPC, design practices including Moriyama & Teshima, and local renowned institutions such as RCRC.
Technical Details
- Publication Date:
- Thursday, April 3, 2025
- Language:
- English
- Format:
- Softcover
- Dimensions:
- 14.8 x 21 cm
- Weight:
- 0.5 kg
- ISBN:
- 978-614-8035-75-3
- Number of Pages:
- 356
- Publisher:
- Kaph Books
- Categories:
- Architecture