SOCIAL VALUES IN ARCHITECTURE : LESSONS FROM THE CONTEXTUAL COMPARISONS OF TWO STATE MOSQUES DURING TWO PHASES OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN MALAYSIA

Abstract

National Mosque and Putra Mosque are both important monuments in Malaysia’s history. While their primary function is to serve as a place of worship, their architectural significance far exceeds that. Because they are state-commissioned and funded, the synthesis of their form informs the socio-historical values of their respective times. It is with this question that this research sets out to investigate the historical, urban and social contexts which could have possibly directed the architectural expression of the mosques.

While the importance of the political styles of both leaders in directing the construction of the mosques is acknowledged, the study is focused particularly on the social issues, and urban contexts into which the mosques are built. Political style is malleable and adapted to serve the prevailing social conditions, therefore, social and urban contexts are deemed to be more informative in the business of ‘decoding’ the formal language of the mosques. National Mosque was built immediately after the country attained independence, while Putra Mosque was built when the country embarked on an ambitious development plan, rhetorically articulated as Vision 2020. Leaders of both eras were challenged with social undercurrents arising from tensions among racial and religious factions, inherent in a multicultural country.

As much as social values may influencing the form of state architecture, the formal synthesis of these values can only come through the architect. Therefore, apart from investigating the social and urban contexts, the administration of the project, including the selection of architect is also examined. This is to give added perspective to understand how aspirations of the architect and social values – political in this case – interplay in the creation of form.

Imagery of the mosque is often a highly stereotyped subject and most books on Islamic architecture present at best a one-dimensional, typological classification of styles. By bringing the National Mosque and Putra Mosque – two mosques with drastically contrasting expressions – into comparison, this study hopes to heighten the understanding that mosque design is larger than a cultural or historical construct. Instead, like any architecture, it must, and can be seen as a contemporary product of prevailing social values and realities.