Compiled by MALIK MERCHANT
Publisher/Editor Simerg, Simergphotos and Barakah

UPDATE (February 19, 2022): With over 100,000 votes cast during the last three weeks, ArchDaily has announced the 2022 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards. The new but yet to be opened Ismaili Jamatkhana and Community Centre in Mumbai was nominated for the award in the religious building category (see story below) but did not come out as the winner. Readers can meet the winners for all the categories by clicking on Winners.

Our attention has been drawn by a reader to ArchDaily’s 2022 building awards, in which a new yet to be opened Ismaili Jamatkhana and Community Centre in Mumbai has been nominated as one of the buildings for the award in the religious buildings category. The following piece is compiled from Archdaily, NUDES (the website of the Jamatkhana’s design company), and a recent Mumbai Diary column in the e-paper Mid-Day — Ed.

For the 13th consecutive year, ArchDaily, the most visited architecture website worldwide, is asking its readers with the responsibility of recognizing and rewarding the projects that are making an impact in the profession with ArchDaily’s 2022 Building of the Year Awards. The nomination phase began on January 25th, 2022 and ends on February 9th, 2022, following which five projects per category that also includes religious buildings will move into the finalists stage, starting February 9th and ending on February 17th. Thus readers will be filtering over 4,500 projects down to just 15 stand-outs.

One of the candidates nominated for the award in the religious buildings category is the Ismaili Jamatkhana & Community Centre located in the neighbourhood of Oshiwara in the western suburban region of Mumbai.

No firm date has yet been established for the Jamatkhana’s opening. The building was designed by city based architectural firm NUDES, whose principal Nuru Karim has worked on a host of institutional projects both in competition/ schematic design and design development stages.

A collection of some 20 photographs of the Jamatkhana and Community Centre taken by Nazim Lokhandwalla are posted on the ArchDaily website.

Writing in the Mumbai Diary column of mid-day under the title All eyes on Oshiwara’s new architectural wonder, the diarist quotes Nuru Karim as saying, “The Jamatkhana and Community Centre design explores the relationship between light, Islamic geometrical patterns, and built form to create an experiential space”. Karim goes on to explain that Islamic geometrical patterns are analysed to develop arrays of multi-sided polygons, thereby creating “Mashrabiya,” that stems from “Ashrab,” meaning “to drink.” The diarist further notes that the term which was originally defined as a space to drink water, evolved later as a space to cool water stored in earthen pots.

We invite all our readers to visit the page highlighting nominations for religious buildings, learn more about the features of the buildings and cast their votes for the building that impresses them the most. The voting for the Ismaili Jamatkhana may be submitted HERE. Readers who wish to vote are required to create an Archdaily email account or sign in via their Google or Facebook account.

Date posted: February 4, 2022.
Last updated: February 19, 2022 (see announcement at top, re : Winners)

Featured photo at top of post: Ismaili Jamatkhana and Community Centre, Mumbai, India. Photo: Nazim Lokhandwalla/Via Archdaily. Please click HERE for more photos of the project on Archdaily.

________________

Before leaving this website please take a moment to visit Simerg’s Table of Contents for links to hundreds of thought provoking pieces on a vast array of subjects including faith and culture, history and philosophy, and arts and letters to name a few. Also, visit Simerg’s sister websites Barakah, dedicated to His Highness the Aga Khan, and Simergphotos.