Promoting Spirituality in the Architectural Thought of the Mosque: A Sense of Place Approach

This research aims to study the effects of meaning, body, and activity on increasing the sense of spirituality in a mosque. To this end, a descriptive-analytic methodology was formulated in three stages based on the mutual relations between the independent variables of the structure’s body and the dependent variables of mental concepts and activities. Initially, the pattern of people’s movement from the entrance to the praying niche and the degree of proximity of the spaces were studied using the material flow patterns technique and the diagram for the relationship between activities. Then, the relationship between the ritual movements of the prayer and the mosque’s architecture was analyzed. The magnitude of load in the human body caused by the movements in the prayer was measured using the OWAS technique. Finally, the spiritual moods and the meaningful concepts affected by light and color were analyzed based on the movement patterns of the prayers in the mosques. The results indicated that Islamic wisdom (including spatial order) directly affects and plays a significant role in determining the relationship between the mosque’s various spaces and the mosque’s structure in general.