SIRTE MOSQUE, LIBYA, AFRICA

Site area: 87,123 sq ft Built up: 32,830 sq ft Year: 2010

Hometown of Colonel Gaddafi, Sirte is perhaps the most beautiful town in Libya with the desert on one side and sea on the other. The main avenue to the city had to house a mosque, as a statement of the emerging Libyan economy, expressing its aspiration to move up as the developing Middle East.

The mosque was scaled to the site and programmed to the neighbourhood. The signature element of the mosque was the play of materials.

The mosque had an external skin of corten steel and rusted copper patina. These are both elements that express ageing and oxidising, hence are an apt permanent finish to the seaside site by avoiding any corrosion and weathering. The mosque stands lit and rendered in metals within a largely traditional skyline of a Libyan town.