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rchitect: Dewan
Location: Najaf, Iraq
The project
This project is a new city council building for the government of Najaf, an Iraqi city some 160km from Baghdad and one of the holiest cities in Shia Islam. The 30,138 m2 building will consist of five floors of administrative facilities, three floors of conference facilities and a parking basement. As well as this project, Dewan – a UAE-based, Iraqi-founded company – are undertaking the restoration of the old city of Najaf and similar project in Karbala, another holy city for Shia Muslims. The firm is also developing a five star hotel in Baghdad.
The site
The 24,000 m2 site is located in a plot on the main road linking the cities of Najaf and Kufa, near the old site of the governorate building in Najaf, to the north-east of the old city. It is surrounded by governmental and educational buildings.
The concept
The project is inspired by elements of Islamic design, as well as contemporary Iraqi politics, as while the building had to reflect Najaf’s status as the 2012 cultural capital of the Islamic World, it also had to demonstrate a new era in post-Saddam Iraqi society. Architect Mohamed Al Assam said that this duality is why he thinks Dewan won the contract. “The jury understood what we wanted to say. We wanted to promote a new philosophy of design for Iraq after it has been very closed for a long time,” he said.
The Details
The first influence from traditional Arabic design is on the buildings schematics, which are inspired by the Arabic letter which is the beginning of the word Najaf and is significant in the Qur’an. At the heart of the building is the form of the cube which is the strongest and most stable of geometric forms, as well as the two curved wings. While a contemporary building, the designers wanted it to have a modern design.
Al Assam said that the design represented a new philosophy for Iraq in a new age. “The design was an interpretation of modern needs and an interpretation of the new philosophy of the government in Iraq, which is open and transparent,” he said.
Al Assam, who was born in Baghdad and studied architecture in the city, said that the new architecture of Iraq was set to differ markedly with that of the Saddam era which, whether intentional or not, represented a closed society. “In a dictatorship everything is closed, everything is inside, and locked, and that is reflected in the architecture. If you see the buildings that were designed or built in the 80s and 90s they were all very much closed buildings. You can never see from the outside to the inside.”