Grand Mosque of Algiers Wins Int’l Architecture Award

The architectural practice KSP Engel is delighted to win a major prize in the world of art and architecture: The Grand Mosque of Algiers, Djamaâ el-Djazaïr, has received this year’s “International Architecture Award 2021” from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Center for Architecture Art Design.

The embassy in Algeria congratulated Algeria for this win on its official Facebook account. And they wrote “We deeply congratulate Algeria for the win of this mosque as the best Architecture for the year 2021, in Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Center for Architecture Art Design.

The embassy noted in the report that this design is the greatest design done by the German architectural Chancellor Angela Merkel.

This award is given each year and it is the oldest and the most famous architectural award worldwide for the best new buildings and designs in the world.

Since 2004, the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design together with the European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies as well as Metropolitan Arts Press, Ltd. has organized the “International Architecture Awards” to recognize the best and most significant new builds, landscape architecture and planning projects designed or constructed by the world’s leading urban and landscape planners worldwide. This year, the Grand Mosque of Algiers, which was designed by KSP Engel, is also among the prize winners.

This year the chosen designs were from 35 countries, they are: Algeria, Austria, Australia Azerbaijan, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay, and Vietnam. The judges chose from the “super” designs and plans about 130 new designs as winners.

The competition included, new apartments, offices, transportable offices, health centers, schools, religious buildings, cultural ones, recycling centers and more, including the most beautiful and the most creatives architectural designs.

After the Islamic pilgrimage sites in Mecca and Medina, it is the third largest mosque in the world. At 265 meters tall, its minaret is higher than any other, while the Prayer Hall hosts up to 36,000 worshippers on religious festival days. The entire complex provides space for up to 120,000 visitors every day and, alongside the Prayer Hall and the minaret, comprises further facilities such as a museum with a research center for Islamic art and history, a conference center, a library, a theological college, apartments and infrastructure buildings. The opening of this mosque was in coincide with the Prophets’ Mawlid.

The “Djamaâ el-Djazaïr”, Arabic for Mosque of Algeria, was completed in 2020 and publicly commissioned for use in the fall of last year. As the Friday Mosque, it is destined to accommodate about 120,000 visitors and is considered the world’s third largest mosque. Alongside the architecture by KSP Engel, the landscape planning by Rainer Schmidt Landschaftsarchitekten and the load-bearing structure by KREBS+KIEFER International also received due recognition.

The mosque is built on a land with a historical meaning for the Algerians, where the school which made for Algerian to convert to Christianity by “Charly Lafigery” when France was occupying Algeria for 132 years. And with the recent attacks on Muslims in France, and the attacks on the Prophet peace be upon him. The name of the land then changed to be called “Muhammadeyya” after the Prophet’s name.

Now, Algerian feel that this mosque is the last step to clean the French culture from their country, and the racism done by the French towards muslims back then and now.