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Essential Architecture- Pakistan Bhong Mosque |
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architect |
Rahim Yar Khan |
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location |
Punjab |
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date |
1932 |
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style |
borrows stylistic elements from nearby Lahore, as well as Iran, Spain and Turkey, and combined them with Western colonial elements of the 1940s. |
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construction |
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type |
Mosque |
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The late Rais Ghazi Mohammad, the landlord of a large estate, began this
project in 1932 in Bhong village, the most important of the scattered
villages on his vast property. The mosque was to be the most glorious
building in his palace compound which also included a smaller mosque, a
madrasa and rooms for students. The work of specialists gathered from
all over Pakistan and India (master masons and craftsmen from Rajasthan,
calligraphers and painters from Karachi), the compound was designed and
constructed over a period of nearly 50 years. Broadly eclectic in their
use of sources, the builders borrowed stylistic elements from nearby
Lahore, as well as Iran, Spain and Turkey, and combined them with
Western colonial elements of the 1940s. Materials and crafts used range
from the traditional (teak, ivory, marble, coloured glass, onyx, glazed
tile work, fresco, mirror work, gilded tracery, ceramic, calligraphic
work and inlay) to the modern and synthetic (marbleised industrial tile,
artificial stone facing, terrazzo, coloured cement tile and wrought
iron). Only traditional materials were used in the mosque interiors. In
the words of the jury: "Bhong enshrines and epitomises the popular taste
in Pakistan with all its vigour, pride, tension and sentiment. Its use,
and misuse, of signs and symbols expresses appropriate growing pains of
an architecture in transition." Recipient of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1986 |
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links |
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| www.essential-architecture.com | |