Education City Mosque

Education City Mosque stands on the campus of Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Education City, the Qatar Foundation campus in Al Rayyan on the western side of Doha. It is part of the Minaretein building, which also houses the College of Islamic Studies with teaching rooms and a research centre.

The building was designed by Mangera Yvars Architects and completed in 2013. It is built of sandstone and steel and is often called the QFIS Mosque, after the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies that shares the building. Its two minarets, which give the building its name, rise to about 90 metres and are set apart from the prayer hall.

The prayer hall rests on five columns that stand for the five pillars of Islam. Its interior uses calligraphy of Quranic verses, and the design includes water channels and green spaces. The whole structure is set at an angle on the campus to face Mecca. The mosque has space for about 2,800 worshippers inside and many more in the outer areas.

The mosque is used daily by students and staff, and it hosts lectures and religious programmes. Its modern form has made it one of the best known contemporary buildings in Qatar.

Non-Muslim visitors are generally welcome outside prayer times. Modest dress is required, with arms and legs covered and headscarves for women. Education City station on the Doha Metro Green Line serves the campus, and a free tram runs around Education City.

Architecture awards for the Minaretein

The Minaretein won Best Religious Building at the World Architecture Festival in 2015, and RIBA nominated it for its first international prize in 2016. The jury attention came from the way the plan joins a working college and a mosque in one structure, following the Islamic idea of the kulliyya, where study and worship sit side by side.

Each of the five columns carries a verse from the Quran. The floor plan winds outward in a spiral, so the teaching rooms, library and offices wrap around the prayer hall. Below the mosque, a four-storey ablution area steps down like a cascade. It keeps the washing spaces apart from the classrooms and also helps cool the building in Qatar's summer heat, which regularly passes 40°C.