At the Edge of Where God Built - by Ziad Jamaleddine & Makram El Kadi & L E Ft Architects (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

At the Edge of Where God Built: Language. Concepts. Islamic Architecture. uses Arabic language and typological distinctions in architecture to examine the diverse body of religious and secular work by L.E.FT Architects.

Organized around five Arabic spatial terms: tawaf--Ka'ba circumambulation space--jami--a mosque space--riwaq--a colonnade--dar--a domicile--and khirba--a ruin, the book conceptualizes L.E.FT's built and installation work to reveal how the architect's praxis translates linguistic and historical knowledge into projective design strategies that traverse religious, cultural, and geographic boundaries.

Through At the Edge of Where God Built, L.E.FT contributes a practitioner's voice to critique the Eurocentric discourse on Islamic architecture, challenging its modernist typological framework, and proposing design strategies that are grounded in traditions of Islamic culture, yet conceived of in ways that inflect these traditions with a contemporary approach to architecture.