Awakening the spirit
As the one-year anniversary of the Christchurch mosque shootings approaches, one family member unlocks the potential for spiritual well-being through architecture.
As the one-year anniversary of the Christchurch mosque shootings approaches, one family member unlocks the potential for spiritual well-being through architecture.
It seems like just months since the mosque shootings. It seems like decades. “It is a strange in-between place,” says Abdallah Alayan, recent master’s graduate of the University of Auckland school of architecture and planning. “It is crazy to think it has almost been a year, but we are doing as well as we can. Being close to my family is really important.”
In the breezy space of Ilex Cafe in Christchurch’s Botanic Gardens, Alayan is attentive and articulate, enthusiastic about his surroundings – the building is one of his favourites in Christchurch – but cautious in holding the conversation too close to the memory of his brother.
On March 15, 2019, Alayan’s brother, Atta Elayyan, a 33-year-old software developer and goalkeeper for the Futsal Whites indoor football team, was killed while praying at the Al Noor Mosque. Alayan took four months off university to be with his family in Christchurch before returning his attention to an architectural project that had suddenly become desperately relevant.
In the months before the shooting, Alayan was working on an idea for his thesis, a series of four architectural responses to the otherworldly landscape of Fiordland aimed at engaging the spirit for the religious and nonreligious through sound, water, meditation and hauntingly evocative built spaces.
It was an audacious plan – in an increasingly secular society, he says, the spirit is not seen as deserving architectural importance. “In an architectural context it is not a priority. We are so preoccupied with issues such as climate change and building waste and social housing, which are all so urgent – something that feels negligible, like the spirit, is ignored.”
It was also a potentially naive proposal “in the sense that it was so unlikely to eventuate”.
For a while, he considered changing his proposal to something more realistic, but then, as he was weighing up his options, March happened.
“I thought, no, I have to do this. It made so much sense and the urgency of the topic became really acute.”
The resulting work, Faith in Fiordland, was joint winner of the 2019 New Zealand Institute of Architects Resene Student Design Award along with Jeremy Priest’s Protest Academia. It is hopeful, ethereal and elegant, a pilgrimage of built spaces taking the visitor on a pathway between Te Anau and Milford Sound.
It is not, he says, defined by what happened in Christchurch. It addresses tourism and the unmet potential of the built fabric in Fiordland, which is currently dominated by prefabricated long drops, sheds, jetties and “very average commercial touristic buildings”, and the lack of physical spaces responding to non-religious spirituality.
“Spaces for spiritual engagement are usually designed within a religious typology, but the majority of people I
know are either agnostic or atheist,” he says. (Alayan describes himself as a Muslim at the more agnostic end of his religion.) “So, we have all these young people unattached to religion and there is no space designed to engage their spirit. Even if you don’t believe the spirit is a real entity, being spiritually moved is something everyone is capable of and engaging the spirit has a huge impact on our well-being, whether or not you are religious.”
In plotting four different structures, he says, the focus of his project remains the journey rather than the destination. “We are so time-poor and so obsessed with ‘getting there’ that creating incentives to pause on the way is important to experiencing journeys in general. Even if the spaces were not designed for the spirit, having that incentive to pause could mean the journey becomes more spiritual.
“So, at the end of day, it isn’t a memorialisation. The design is still tailored for Fiordland and for the agnostic and atheist and religious New Zealand spirit and that was the intention throughout.”
But the effect of the mosque shootings on his family and his community is also a context for this strangely elusive work. After spending time with his family in Christchurch and joining them on a pilgrimage to Mecca, he threw himself back into work and study. “The fact I could be busy and focused on something I am passionate about, that I could put myself in that mindset of optimism through the research, that had an impact.”
“HE WAS MY BIGGEST MENTOR”
Although initially reluctant to present his thesis in the context of the March shootings, he was encouraged during the lead-up to the awards to acknowledge the role the shootings had played in pursuing his project.
“It was tricky. I was hesitant to be defined by what happened and how it affected my
“I attend Friday prayers and there’s a bit of stress in finding a car park, but sitting down and being with the community in that moment has a massive impact on your well-being.”
family and my community. In an awards context, I didn’t want to be seen as seeking sympathy. But part of the narrative and poetry within the work did come out of the healing process – that gave me a better lens to look through. It did feel like an urgent discussion because of what happened – it shows the spirit is an entity we need to start addressing in our spaces.”
There is also a more personal side. Although his design was never planned as a memorial to his brother, “Being able to produce something that I could be proud of and got recognition for is something [Elayyan] would have been keen to see for me. He was my biggest mentor – he was always expecting the absolute best from me and seeing my potential more than I could ever see it.”
Although Alayan was born in New
Zealand, Elayyan, 12 years his senior, was born in Kuwait and spent his early years in the US before moving with his Palestinian parents and baby sister to Christchurch. “He saw himself as a New Zealander, that was at the core of his identity in terms of public life. At the same time, we all define ourselves as Palestinian, so we balance the two – the Kiwi and the Palestinian. We are proud of these roots, although the pride in that probably comes from the adversity more than anything – if Palestine was this stable area, we probably wouldn’t be so worried about making sure we were proud of it, if that makes sense.”
THE PAGEANTRY OF COMMEMORATION
Growing up in Christchurch, Alayan experienced the physical and spiritual environment of the mosque as a kind of “third space”.
“It isn’t commercial or domestic, it is this in-between space purely for spiritual engagement. The Al Noor Mosque isn’t an incredible building – it is like a cartoon of a traditional mosque – but it is an escape in
“For me and my family, there’s that guilt about being overexposed. You do see pockets of the New Zealand public being uncomfortable with the amount of attention this event has garnered.”
its own sense. I attend Friday prayers after work and there’s a bit of stress in finding a car park, but sitting down and being with the community in that moment has a massive impact on your well-being. It is quiet, or you can hear people supplicating in the corner – there is something so moving about being there and being with the community in that moment.”
For Muslims, he says, that inclusivity is crucial, although not always reflected in the architecture. “When I talk with my parents about the way we build mosques like these opaque fortresses, they agree it is not presenting the right image – there is all this mystery about how people of non-mainstream religions practise and that opaqueness makes room to create that negative narrative, whereas if you operate in a transparent way in the way you worship, then there is nothing to hide.”
Like many family members of those killed in last year’s mosque attacks, Alayan is unsure
Growing up in Christchurch, Alayan experienced the physical and spiritual environment of the mosque as a kind of “third space”.
about the need to mark the anniversary. He will attend if his family goes, “But in terms of the pageantry of commemoration, as a family and probably as a community we are less interested in that. For me and my family, there’s that guilt about being over-exposed. You do see pockets of the New Zealand public being uncomfortable with the amount of attention this event has garnered – maybe those comments stem from a racist angle, but we need to be sensitive about the way we commemorate things. I know it is something we are dealing with as a nation – this didn’t just shake the Muslim community, it shook the core of the nation and the Christchurch community as a whole – but I would not mind having less, or at least doing things in the most simplistic way possible.
“For my family, the policy changes and the progress made in regard to racism in general have been a major step forward in addressing immigrant issues, but there are still indigenous issues waiting to be solved meaningfully, so hopefully this is a step forward in becoming a better society, rather than a better society for Muslims.”