Since Aga Khan IV established the foundation that bears his name in 1967, the Imam of the Ismaili community has built hospitals, homes, schools and religious and cultural centers in cities around the world such as London, Toronto, Lisbon and Dubai. The last of these Ismaili centers was recently opened in Houston (Texas) and was designed by Shiraz (Iran)-born architect and British citizen Farshid Mousavi.
His Highness the Aga Khan IV passed away in February this year. The title was inherited by his son, Prince Rahim, who has since become the new Imam of the Ismailis, the fifth Aga Khan and the person who opened the new Houston center earlier this month. He said at the time: “This building is called the Ismaili Center, but it is not intended for Ismailis only, but for all Houstonians to use. This is an open place for those who seek knowledge, thought and dialogue.” How should a building be this ambitious?
The current Aga Khan’s father began purchasing the land overlooking Buffalo Bayou Park, where the property was built, in 2006. Such planning is essential when building a park. And that’s pretty much what this center offers the city of Houston. Today, this 4.5 hectares – about 45,000 square meters – is a network of flower beds and orchards with fountains, ponds, pergolas and grilles that nod to the Islamic architectural tradition, which relies on the five senses to build memorable buildings. The gardens thus lead to a bright building surrounded by terraces, fountains and rows of trees. A building divides the central courtyard into entrances and corridors.
Architect Farshid Mousavi talks about an urban sanctuary, a meeting place between people and nature. Achieving a moment of serenity is one of the goals of the center, which is updating the Islamic tradition of courtyards and grilles to deal with the sun by creating shade. This historical tradition is built with courtyards, terraces and grilles and decorated with repetitive geometric motifs. And to that character, Moussaoui — who had already signed on to the Cleveland Museum of Art — added a lightness to a building as modern as it is difficult to date in time. This objectivity is as powerful a message as the authorship of the property itself, in the hands of a woman.
Thus, as tradition dictates, the boundaries between the interior of the building and the exterior are porous. To do this, Mousavi and his team used wide arches that make the building a paradoxical architecture: inconspicuous, despite its geometric character, and rooted in its lightness. Materially, the grid and mosaic – which also refer to tradition – coexist on the façade with the interior glass, concrete, wood and steel. The central courtyard in front of the prayer room is crowned by a skylight that floods the space with natural light.
The exterior speaks of logic and naturalism, used to modernize the Islamic landscape in the 21st century. The author of this landscape, Nelson Baird Woltz, had already worked for the Aga Khan Foundation, and received the landscaping commission three decades earlier, in 2011. He then began a journey through Spain and Egypt to study the sound of water, the size of flower beds, the rhythm of geometry and symbolism in Islamic gardens. With this information, their challenge was to modernize this tradition by reducing water consumption thanks to the engineering – signed by Londoner Hanif Kara from AKT II -. Thus, every garden path, every tree alignment and every fountain are designed to mitigate external noise and enhance their maintenance.
Weltz talked about bringing Islamic traditions to Texas by using cacti, agave and other native species to build an ecosystem that welcomes the visitor and protects itself. This is what this building looks like, an estate that protects tradition by taking risks: sharing it, updating it and expanding it.
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