The project aimed to develop a new home for the Australian Islamic Mission as well as a complex of structures to facilitate study and religious worship for Muslim members of the local community. The property was built in two stages, with Stage 1 consisting of the construction of a Mosque that can accommodate 300 worshippers and Stage 2 consisting of community buildings.

The buildings are situated around a quadrangle that is partially open on one side, giving students and community members an internal view while also providing privacy. This arrangement generates two adjacent but different courtyards, allowing the client brief to segregate the principal daily operations. The first of the two courtyards, which is more open to the public, is directly accessible from the street and borders the Mosque. For attendees entering and exiting the Mosque, this courtyard serves primarily as an orientation and congregation place. The second courtyard, which is entered through but physically separate from the first, is larger and more private.

The architectural expression of the Mosque is intentionally separate and distant from the remainder of the future community buildings. Entry to the Mosque is via the first courtyard, with male and female worshippers separating to perform ablutions, or ‘wudu’ before prayer. Male worshippers diverge right as they approach the Mosque, into the raking triangular form of the male ablutions area at ground level before passing back out below the compressed entry awning which opens out into the main prayer hall.

The sculptural off-form concrete raking ceiling to the Mosque main prayer space references ornamental vaulting of ‘muqarnas’ in traditional Islamic architecture, with each of the 102 off-form concrete ‘muqarnas’ containing a 30mm diameter hole at its centre. Shafts of daylight are drawn into the main prayer space through the ‘muqarnas’, illuminating the space as the sun moves around from dawn prayer through mid-day and mid-afternoon prayer, prior to sunset and evening prayers.

Candalepas Associates’ Punchbowl Mosque, is a new religious and community centre woven into the urban fabric of one of southwest Sydney’s most culturally diverse localities. A landmark contribution to Australia’s Islamic community, as well as the local architectural landscape, it negotiates with the conventions of the traditional mosque typology through the geometric interplay of hard and soft edges and a raw and austere sense of materiality. Poetically, Punchbowl Mosque searches for what is essential in sacred architecture and, in the process, redefines our understanding of the Australian mosque.

Punchbowl is a densely populated suburb in Sydney’s southwest, quaintly named after a nearby circular valley, referred to by 19th century settlers as ‘the punch bowl’. Today, the area is known locally for its cultural diversity, with migrant communities from countries including Lebanon, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan and China now calling Punchbowl home. In the midst of bustling multiculturalism, the Punchbowl Mosque provides a new hub for the area’s Muslim community, and further, offers a new vision for Islam as part of the broader Australian community in the 21st century.

In an interview discussing early ambitions for the Punchbowl Mosque, Dr Zachariah Matthews of the Australian Islamic Mission stated that the congregation wanted “to have a mosque that had the traditional elements … but that the finish itself and the design of it needed to be contemporary, new and different.” Whilst Candalepas Associates’ Punchbowl Mosque does in many ways depart from the conventional mosque typology, it still carefully retains those characteristics essential to cultivating an atmosphere of reflection and awe. Students of sacred architecture and followers of Islam will note the conspicuous absence of any minaret from the Punchbowl Mosque — at the heart of this omission lies exploration into the essence of mosque architecture — as Angelo Candalepas has explained, it is not the structure of the minaret itself that is significant, but rather, the tradition and sound of the human voice projected from it announcing prayer times.

Commentators have likened the Punchbowl Mosque to Brutalism, characteristic of public architecture from the 1950s to the 1970s. However, the only real connection between Candalepas Associates’ mosque and the Brutalist School seems to be the preference for concrete, poured and cast in situ. In fact, Candalepas has been quick to point out that his project was never intended as a reference to Brutalism, nor was it ever intended to be ‘retrogressive’ in its outlook. Indeed, more fruitful comparisons may be drawn between the Punchbowl Mosque and the exquisite concrete detailing found throughout the work of Pritzker Prize recipient Tadao Ando. Similarly, the use of concrete in Candalepas Associates’ mosque is incredibly refined; the juxtaposition of soft curvilinear forms and hard, crisp edges in concrete is both elegant and striking.

Tensions between an intimate human scale and the scale of the sublime are evoked by visual datums created by the ascending vertical hierarchy of materials in the prayer hall, and the rhythm and repetition of the 102 Muqarnas domes, seemingly ‘carved’ into the ceiling. The Muqarnas domes each contain a 20 mm diameter oculus, introducing a play of light and shadow. The effect of myriad tiny ‘pin-points’ of light in the cavernous, honeycombed interior kindles associations with constellations and planets, and the historic Islamic astronomers of the middle ages.

Aligned with the manifestly innovative character of the Punchbowl Mosque, Candalepas Associates’ have reconsidered the various programmatic components essential to worship in Islam. Ablutions are performed against a backdrop of timber accents and concrete, with light filtering from above, behind a sloped ceiling light-shelf, reminiscent of Jorn Utzon’s superb Bagsvaerd Church. The women’s gallery is elevated over the main prayer hall in a mezzanine, veiled by elegant vertical timber battens. The main dome directly above is stepped in concrete and timber, pierced at its center by a large oculus. The overall effect is powerful; in an interview with the Australian broadcaster SBS, a member of Punchbowl’s Islamic community said of the Punchbowl Mosque that “having this kind of extraordinary design … will uplift not only our beliefs but also what other people think about Islam.”

Candalepas Associates have received a number of accolades and awards for the Punchbowl Mosque, including the Australian Institute of Architects 2018 Sulman Medal for Public Buildings — the second time the practice has been awarded this prestigious prize (the first was for All Saints Primary School in 2008). Reflecting on the achievements of the Punchbowl Mosque, Candalepas has stated that “architecture should import, as does poetry, a sense of observation of the world.” And certainly, the Punchbowl Mosque is imbued with a sense of the choreography of worship and the needs of its congregation, but in the poetic exploration for that which is essential, it has also uncovered latent potential to transform communities and architectural traditions.

The Australian Islamic Mission (AIM) is a community-based organization, established in 1973 and based in Sydney, which fundraised to pay for the project. the mosque is located in the suburb of Punchbowl.

Structure of the mosque features Decorative concrete vaulted roof, a central worship space with a concrete honeycomb structure that is derived from the aesthetics of Islamic architecture.

Candalepas Associates designed the mosque in a rectangular layout that has two adjoined but separate courtyards. Prayer spaces can accommodate up to 300 men and women. there are also courtyards that provide segregated gender-specific routes to perform ablutions before getting into the prayer room. The male entrance is located to the left sided entrance, leading to the trapezium-shaped male ablutions room on the ground floor supported with an entry awning shelters users as they walk by the main prayer space. The left-side entrance leads females to their prayer galleries on the first and second floors, which can be accessed from the minaret.

These upper galleries overlook the prayer space underneath the timber-lined dome and oculus, placing the female users at the heart of the mosque. “The women’s gallery, which sits below the dome, gives them the primacy of place, elevated into the centre of the space. By assigning an equivalent significance to the periphery and the centre, the traditionally singular spatial order is re-conceived as fluid, multivalent and participatory.”

The moving silhouettes of the females can be seen from below through timber battens in the window. “It’s traditional for the men to worship in the main space,” said Candalepas Associates.

The worshippers face a sculptural, stepped wall of ornamental vaulting on the prayer space’s south and west internal walls, orienting them towards al qibla direction.

The 102 half-domed forms of the cast-in-situ pattern alludes to the honeycomb structure of muqarnas – ornamented vaulting seen in traditional Islamic architecture. Streams of daylight extrude through a 30-millimetre hole in the centre of each of the concrete muqarnas. These are designed to illuminate the space throughout the day for the five prayers. Above the prayer hall, a plywood clad dome with an oculus feeds daylight into space. “The dome was a consequence of a series of trials that were prototyped,” said the studio. “The geometry in section allowed the dome to emerge in a manner that describes the nature of the sphere as graded by flat sheets of marine-plywood with hoop-pine veneer – the flat surface area of the sheets enlarging as they become tangential to the edge of the shape.” A series of entrance areas that are surrounding the domed central worship space. The main entrance from the street is linked to the smaller courtyard. Located next to the mosque, it acts as a circulatory congregation space for those
entering and exiting the grounds. As towards the centre of the project, the second courtyard is larger and more private. Opening out from the prayer space, the courtyard can be used as an additional outdoor space for religious festivals
and cultural events.