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Unveiling the verses

Part 2 Project 2004
Lim Fun Kit
Matthew Usher
National University of Singapore | Singapore
I am interested in the border between the inside and the outside and the thesis is an exploration of a particular instance of this border: that between believers and unbelievers

In staging the exchange between the 2, the architecture seeks to tease out, for the believers where is the limit between being transparent and being veiled; where is the limit between being open to mixing with the unbelievers, and being unclean (like them).

The strategies developed are derived from the Islamist’s rituals and behaviors (the way they feeds, dress, moves etc) and hence their way of using space which is different from an unbeliever. It is in the surfaces, the materiality of the interface where the spaces meet, where the scheme starts to negotiate between the believers and the unbelievers.

For in pushing this border, there is a need to separate the (Islamic) values from the form. So as to let the others in.

Lim Fun Kit
Matthew Usher


Fun Kit’s scheme is fairly topical. It arises at of two axes emitting from two existing religious structures; the Masjid Burhani Mosque and St. Andrew Cathedral. The meeting of the two axes was previously obstructed by an existing car parking structure. The sudden removal of the car parking structure presents interesting play between these two religious worlds. The paradoxical play starts with the knowledge that members of the mosque are famed for their trading and commercial successes whilst existing in an Islamist discourse that desires to polarize the church and the world of commerce as the other. The design is therefore of a shopping complex where there is a meeting of the two walls. Exchange becomes more than a mere buying and selling.

Tutor(s)

2004
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