Shahed Saleem, Architect and Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Cities at the University of Westminster, has designed the inaugural Ramadan Pavilion 2023 at the at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), with the help of 20 Westminster students. The installation is inspired by the holy month of Ramadan and will be on display in the Exhibition Road Courtyard at the V&A in South Kensington in London until Monday 1 May 2023.
The Pavilion is made of an assembly of drawings and photographs from the V&A’s collection of historic Islamic architecture. The method Saleem used in designing the Pavilion intentionally reflects the way that Muslim communities have built British mosques, with the various traditions of Islamic history reflected through architectural symbols.
The Pavilion aims to celebrate the lived experiences of Muslims across the UK and the world, in the holiest month of the Islamic calendar. It also aims to bring attention to the values and traditions of Ramadan.
Westminster students helped with putting the Ramadan Pavilion together and assembling it at the V&A. Saleem’s design, which features an array of brightly coloured structures which make up the Pavilion, intentionally responds to the first mosque-like structure in Britain, which was built in the 18th century and combines this with features found in a modern 21st century mosque.
Mr Saleem said: “The more I looked at mosques across the country the more I saw buildings which defied all notions of convention and taste, usually self-designed and built by highly marginalised and economically deprived communities. In this I saw great resilience, determination and inventiveness. These communities were creating new architectural meanings by drawing from their own lived experience and according to their own rules. In my work I explore this formal vocabulary through sketches and experimental maquettes, and these have now come to fruition in the Ramadan Pavilion which embodies years of observation and exploration.”
Shahed Saleem's Ramadan Pavilion (Credit: V&A Museum)
Shahed Saleem at the Ramadan Pavilion (Credit: V&A Museum)
The V&A originally approached Saleem following the publication of his book The British Mosque: An Architectural and Social History which was published in 2018. The Ramadan Pavilion was originally intended to be the V&A’s headline installation at the London Festival of Architecture in 2021, before the pandemic disrupted the project.
Mr Saleem’s research and practice interests are in the architecture of migrant and post-migrant communities, and in particular their relationship to notions of heritage, belonging and nationhood.
The Ramadan Pavilion is part of the annual Ramadan Festival, a series of performances, workshops and events organised and is delivered by the Ramadan Tent project. The Ramadan Tent Project is an award-winning charity established in 2013 with a mission of bringing communities together and developing the understanding of Ramadan.
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