Grand Mosque of West Sumatra, Grand mosque in Padang, Indonesia
The Grand Mosque of West Sumatra is a square building whose four corners taper into points, echoing the gonjong roof of Minangkabau houses. Its roof frame is made of steel pipes supported by four curving concrete columns. The main prayer hall sits on the second floor of three, reached by a sloping ramp from the street, and holds 20,000 people.
The idea of a new mosque arose in 2005, and Rizal Muslimin won the 2006 design competition, chosen from 323 entrants. Governor Gamawan Fauzi laid the first stone on 21 December 2007. Work proceeded in stages because of budget limits, and the mosque was completed on 4 January 2019 at a cost of about Rp330 billion.
The roof shape recalls the cloth held by four Quraysh clan leaders to lift the Black Stone, and also the gonjong roof of the Minangkabau rumah gadang. Historian Sudarman of UIN Imam Bonjol Padang notes that the design accommodates local architecture, including gonjong forms and rumah gadang decorative patterns. The prayer hall has no dome.
The prayer hall sits on the upper level, six metres above the ground, and is reached by a long sloping ramp that runs from the street up to the building. The site covers 7.5 hectares at the corner of Jalan Khatib Sulaiman and Jalan Ahmad Dahlan, in the Alai Parak Kopi area of North Padang.
The roof frame is made of steel pipes resting on four curving concrete columns, and the design was chosen in a 2006 competition that drew 323 entrants from several countries. The winner, architect Rizal Muslimin, had long studied Minangkabau rumah gadang architecture.
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