Prishtina Central Mosque by Tarh O Amayesh

A beautiful and symbolic structure dominates one of the main urban centers of Prishtina, Kosovo. With its impressive 103 meter high minarets and rotating dome, the Iranian office of consultant architects and town planners TARH O AMAYESH has projected a masterpiece Mosque. The design and conceptualization behind the edifice is particularly appropriate for a house of religion and faith: massive in size and composed of circular, ascending blocks of stone, there is a strongly figurative image of the mosque stretching out towards the skies exactly as the body reaches the soul in prayer. As a matter of fact, the project is intended as an emblem for movement and dynamics towards improvement, closely connected to the Muslim vision of the mosque as a space for becoming and spiritual rebirth.

The architects skillfully created an extensive stone surface on which the 99 names of Allah based on the Quran were beautifully carved in more than forty languages, while the minarets rising on its right side hold religious epigraphs in a continuum of the Muslim message towards the Kiblah. The mosque stands prevailing in a vast open space, untouched by the near buildings and enabling massive flows of people to access it and enjoy the prayer halls, restaurant, class rooms, library and multiple areas for social gathering. The design solution for the Prishtina mosque is clearly an effort to create a bridge between the East and West. Although a religious site for the Muslim faith, and therefore officially belonging to an Eastern culture, the city itself is strongly influenced by Western ways of life. The structure therefore also justly represents the social and historical compromise this geographic region has reached, in a progressive consolidation process of Kosovo's position in the Islamic world.