After a difficult life and the loss of her husband and near relatives, the client donated a part of her land for a mosque to be built. After her death, her grand-daughter, an architect, acted on her behalf as fundraiser, designer, client and builder to bring the project to completion.
In an increasingly dense neighbourhood of Dhaka, the Mosque was raised on a plinth on a site axis creating a 13-degree angle with the qibla direction, which called for innovation in the layout. A cylindrical volume was inserted into a square, facilitating a rotation of the prayer hall, and forming light courts on four sides. The hall is a space raised on eight peripheral columns. Ancillary functions are located in spaces created by the outer square and the cylinder.
There are two structural systems in place – the load-bearing brick walls which form the outer perimeter of the Mosque, and which house the smaller spaces with short spans, and the reinforced concrete-frame structural system that spans the prayer hall, which is a column-free space of 15.25m x 15.25m, supported by eight concrete columns. The load-bearing brick walls exploit the depth between the outer square and an inner circle (in plan), allowing for buttressing in the interstitial space. This also allows panels between the load-bearing structure to have a jali of brick, leaving out alternate bricks and rotating them.