State Mosque Competition Baghdad, Iraq - Amanat Al Asima Project No. 651/328.. Cet article n’est pas disponible.State Mosque Competition Baghdad, Iraq - Amanat Al Asima Project No. 651/328.

First and only edition of a rare, lavishly produced record of Saddam Hussein's unrealized state mosque project in Baghdad. Conceived within his early programme to rebuild and monumentalize the capital, the scheme was overseen by the architect and urban planner Rifat Chadirji, appointed to coordinate preparations for the planned 1982 summit of the Non-Aligned Movement. Chadirji (1926-2020), widely regarded as the father of modern Iraqi architecture, was a central cultural figure in Baghdad from the 1950s to the 1970s. After designing major monuments under Abd al-Karim Qasim, he fell from favour, was imprisoned in 1978, and was rehabilitated following Hussein's rise in 1979, becoming architectural adviser to the Baghdad mayoralty and chair of the State Grand Mosque Committee. The resulting international competition sought to revive Baghdad's historic and spiritual status, a project Chadirji framed as serving the nation rather than the regime. Twenty-two firms were invited, seven shortlisted, including leading Iraqi architects alongside Minoru Takeyama, Rasem Badran, Ricardo Bofill, and Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown. The vast brief envisaged a mosque for tens of thousands of worshippers with library, teaching and conference facilities, residences, and extensive ancillary spaces. Submitted in January 1983 and judged by a panel including Chadirji, Do an Kuban, and Stefano Bianca, the competition awarded first place to Rasem Badran, with Bofill and Maath Alousi in supporting roles. The volume opens with the project brief and a survey of the mosque's role in Islamic civilization, followed by illustrated presentations of the seven schemes with models, plans, elevations, and statements of intent. The project was abandoned amid the Iran-Iraq War and relocation of the summit to New Delhi. Chadirji soon left Iraq for the United States and later London, while the competition helped secure Badran major Saudi commissions, culminating in his receiving Saudi nationality in 2022. Laid in are two items addressed to the Turkish architect Asuman Uz: an Iraqi Embassy invitation to a buffet dinner in Ankara, January 1984, printed with the Eagle of Saladin, and a complimentary card from the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research bearing a handwritten note. "MEA sits down with Rifat Chadirji, the father of Iraqi architecture", Middle East Architecture, November 2017. Six locations world-wide: British Library, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Abdullatif Al Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture, and universities of Colorado and Exeter. Landscape folio. Profusely illustrated. Original gold cloth, lettered in gilt, colour photographic image mounted on front board, edges gilt. A little rubbed and soiled at the extremities, small chip to the mounted plate, internally clean and sound: a very good copy.…