Bait Ur Rouf Mosque (বায়তুর রউফ জামে মসজিদ)

Bait Ur Rouf Mosque stands in Faidabad, a residential area of north Dhaka. It was designed by the Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum and completed in 2012.

The project began after Sufia Khatun, Tabassum's grandmother, donated part of her land for a mosque following the deaths of two of her daughters. She asked her granddaughter to design it in 2005. Worshippers used a temporary structure on the site at first. After Sufia Khatun died, Tabassum took on the roles of fundraiser, designer and builder, and local donors paid for most of the work.

A mosque of brick and light

The building has no dome, no minaret and no applied decoration. A square brick volume raised on a plinth contains a cylinder, and the prayer hall inside is turned 13 degrees so that it faces the qibla correctly. The gaps between the square and the turned hall form four light courts. The hall has no internal columns and rests on eight columns at its edge. Dozens of round openings in the walls and roof let in natural light that moves across the floor during the day, and handmade terracotta brick walls allow air through to keep the hall cool.

The design draws on the brick mosques of the Bengal Sultanate while using a modern plan. The raised plinth also helps in this flood-prone area.

Aga Khan Award and the Jameel Prize

In 2016 the mosque shared the Aga Khan Award for Architecture with the Friendship Centre in Gaibandha, and in 2018 it won the Jameel Prize from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The hall holds about 400 worshippers, and construction took about five years.