From the 1970s London has been home – or second home – to some of the Arab world’s wealthiest figures. There are the big landmarks of Islam: the Regent’s Park mosque and the Ismaili Centre, both by establishment British modernist architects (Sirs Frederick Gibberd and Hugh Casson).
Edwin Heathcote | August 14 2009
The threshold of the Jamme Masjid (Great Mosque) in London’s Brick Laneconsists of a tatty set of worn steps rising to an inconspicuous door, its once creamy paint scuffed and dirty. From the cheap aluminium door handle hangs a loop of plastic acting as an improvised lock.
At street level, there is little to suggest this is the entrance to one of London’s most extraordinary structures, a building that embodies the urban fabric’s history as a palimpsest of migration and the turnover of immigrant cultures. Built in 1743 by the French Huguenots, who developed Spitalfields into a prosperous economy based on the silk trade, by 1819 it had become a Wesleyan chapel. In 1898, as Brick Lane flourished as a centre of Jewish immigration provoked by eastern European pogroms, the building became a synagogue. In 1976, long abandoned by a now prosperous Jewish population, it became the locus of the Bangladeshi community that had settled in the run-down district.
Complete at source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/fb5744f4-8860-11de-82e4-00144feabdc0.html
Ismailimail 