Diasporic Aesthetics and the Genealogy of an Urban Mosque: An Analysis of the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.

The space of emplacement for the first purpose-built urban mosque in Washington, D.C., was developed by Italian-born architect Mario Rossi ‘with an ensemble of relations that makes them appear as juxtaposed, set off against one another, implicated by each other – that makes them appear, in short, as a sort of configuration.’ In a penetrating critique of space, such architectural encounters have featured prominently in the essay ‘Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias’, where Foucault has classified ‘other spaces’ to encode them in his analysis according to their function, fragmented arrangement, and the relation among sites.

Keywords: American Mosque ; Diaspora ; Mario Rossi ; Other’ spaces ; Places ; Sites