REPETITIVE ELEMENTS AND THEIR OBJECTIVES IN ANCIENT AND CONTEMPORARY MOSQUES

Abstract

Mosques are the most important buildings in Islamic architectures. They represent the place of worship for Muslims. Like other architectural buildings, they consist of components and repeated elements forming their general structures. However, some of these formal elements have changed due to the mosque development and the contemporary trends. Therefore, this research was conducted to discover the repetitive use of the elements and the differences between ancient and contemporary mosques by studying ten samples of mosques. It showed the difference between these two periods in terms of element repetition and utilization. Moreover, it tried to find the related objectives of repetitive use within these two periods. It concluded that some elements from the ancient period were used repetitively in the contemporary mosques. Based on the analysis findings, the design objective is achieved by the repetitive use in both periods. Furthermore, the repetitive use of the elements as structural objective takes second place in ancient mosques. Meanwhile, the environmental objective is second to achieve in contemporary mosques.