Mecca's Mega Architecture Casts Shadow Over Hajj _ Art and Design _ the Guardian

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Mecca's mega architecture casts shadow over hajjTowering over Mecca, this is the world's second-tallest building and it is just a tiny part of a voracious development that hasseen historic sites bulldozed and locals forced into shantytowns. As the hajj begins, Oliver Wainwright reports Plus: Riazat Buttoffers a view from the ground

Oliver Wainwright

Arabian heights ... the Abraj al-Bait looms over the Kabaa in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty

Tuesday 23 October 2012 19.03 BST

A glowing green disc hovers high in the sky at night, casting an eerie glow over a forest of minarets, cranes and concrete framesthat seem to stretch endlessly into the dusty distance, like a vast eld of dominoes. The disc is the largest clockface in the world

and not only does it adorn the tallest clocktower in the world, it also sits atop a building boasting the biggest oor area in the



world. Visible 30km away, this is the Abraj al-Bait, which rises like Big Ben on steroids to tower 600m over the holy mosque of

Mecca in the spiritual heart of the Islamic world.

This thrusting pastiche palace houses an array of luxury hotels and apartments, perched above a ve-storey slab of shopping

malls. Completed last year at a cost of $15bn (9bn), it stands where an Ottoman fortress once stood. A stone citadel built in 1781to repel bandits, the Ajyad fortress's demolition sparked an international outcry in 2002, but this was quickly rebued by the

Saudi Islamic aairs minister. "No one has the right to interfere in what comes under the state's authority," he said. "Thisdevelopment is in the interest of all Muslims all over the world." The fortress wasn't just swept away the hill it sat on went, too.

Shooting 26 searchlights 10km into the skies, and blaring its call to prayer 7km across the valley, the Abraj al-Bait is also the

world's second tallest building. Encrusted with mosaics and inlaid with gold, it is the most visible (and audible) sign of thefrenzied building boom that has taken hold of Saudi Arabia's holy city over the last 10 years. "It is truly indescribable," says Sami

Angawi, architect and founder of the Jeddah-based Hajj Research Centre, who has spent the last three decades researching anddocumenting the historic buildings of Mecca and Medina, few of which now remain. In particular, the house of the prophet's

wife, Khadijah, was razed to make way for public lavatories; the house of his companion, Abu Bakr, is now the site of a Hilton

hotel; and his grandson's house was attened by the King's palace. "They are turning the holy sanctuary into a machine, a citywhich has no identity, no heritage, no culture and no natural environment. They've even taken away the mountains,"

says Angawi.

Geological features have proved no match for dynamite and concrete, which are being liberally deployed to make way for theburgeoning number of visitors. Three million Muslims arrived in Mecca this week for the annual hajj pilgrimage, an event that has

mutated from a simple, spartan rite of passage, in which pilgrims give up their worldly goods, into a big-bucks business worthy ofLas Vegas with the overblown architecture to match.

Along the western ank of the city are the rst towers of the Jabal Omar development, a sprawling complex that will eventually

accommodate 100,000 people in 26 luxury hotels sitting on another gargantuan plinth of 4,000 shops and 500 restaurants,

along with its own six-storey prayer hall. The line of blocks, which will climb to heights of up to 200 metres and terminate in amonumental gateway building, share the clocktower's Islamic-lite language: a cliched dressing of pointed arches and ligree

grillwork plastered over generic concrete shells.

The developers have somehow transformed a type of architecture that evolved from a dense urban grain of low-rise courtyardsand narrow streets into meaningless wallpaper: an endlessly repeatable pattern for the decoration of standardised slab after

standardised slab. Flimsy rows of concrete arches hang above swaths of blue mirror glass, punctuated by stick-on timber trellis

screens. These are modelled on traditional mashrabiya panels, those beautiful latticework openings designed as ventilating veils,



but here they become meaningless applique. "If we are imitating, why can't we imitate the best?" asks Angawi, in a tone ofdesperation. "Why are we imitating the worst mistakes of 60 or 70 years ago from around the world only even bigger?"

Another development of repetitive slabs, echoing Jabal Omar's toast-rack urbanism, is slated for the northern side of the Grand

Mosque, at al-Shamiya, while a $10bn plan to provide an extra 400,000 sq metres of prayer halls there is almost complete.Standing like a gigantic triangular slice of wedding cake, this building will accommodate 1.2m more worshippers each year, but it

has come at a price.

"This was the most historic part of the old city," says Irfan al-Alawi, executive director of the UK-based Islamic Heritage Research

Foundation, who has worked in vain to raise the prole of his country's historic sites. "It has now all been attened." Residents

were evicted, he says, with one week's notice, and many have still not been compensated a common story across Mecca's

developments. "They are now living in shantytowns on the edge of the city without proper sanitation. Locals, who have lived

here for generations, are being forced out to make way for these marble castles in the sky."

Alawi describes the imminent arrival of yet more seven-star hotels even closer to the mosque than the al-Bait clocktower, as well

as proposals to develop Jabal Khandama, on the hills to the east, which will likely see the erasure of the site where the prophet

Muhammad was born. Alawi says this wilful destruction of Islamic heritage is no accident: it is driven by state-endorsed

Toast-rack urbanism ... how the al-Shamiya area will look



wahhabism, the hardline interpretation of Islam that perceives historical sites as encouraging sinful idolatry. So anything that

relates to the prophet could be in the bulldozer's sights.

"It is the end of Mecca," says Alawi. "And for what? Most of these hotels are 50% vacant and the malls are empty the rents are

too expensive for the former souk stall-holders. And people praying in the new mosque extension will not even be able to see the

Kaaba."

The Kaaba is the holy black cube in the centre of the Grand Mosque, around which pilgrims walk; proximity to it has become the

ultimate currency, allowing hotel suites with the best views to charge $7,000 per night during peak seasons. This unique

concentricity, with everything determined by its orientation towards the hallowed centre, has spawned a strangely diagrammatic

radial urbanism. From above, like a sea of iron lings pulled by a magnet, the whole city appears to crowd round a core, thevortex of pilgrims giving way to an equally swirling current of tower blocks. It is the axis of prayer writ large in concrete.

The road to Mecca funnels trac into two lanes: the one marked "Muslims only" goes to the holy city; the other, marked "Non

Muslims", bypasses it, since the latter me included are forbidden entry to Mecca (and Medina) under Saudi law. Soon after this

hajj, work will start on the expansion of the mataf, the open area around the Kaaba, to triple its capacity to 130,000 pilgrims perhour. But to create this, the historic centre of the mosque will be obliterated. "They want to get rid of the brick vaults and stone

columns that have stood there since the 17th century," says Alawi. "These are the oldest part of the holy mosque, designed by the

great architect Sinan. The pillars are inscribed with stories and the names of the prophet's companions, so the wahhabis want to

see them bulldozed."



The desperation to be, or feel, as close as possible to the Kaaba has forced buildings to become ever higher, ever more ridiculously

tapered, so everyone can have a view, however notional, of the sacred centre. This has given the sanctied "mother of villages"the most expensive real estate in the world: a square foot around the Grand Mosque now sells for up to $18,000, mayor Osama al-

Bar said last year, dwarng the Monaco average of $4,400.

As the inux of pilgrims increases, land values will continue to rise: 12 million visit the city every year, a gure expected to swellto 17 million by 2025. They will be eased on their way by a new high-speed rail link that will connect gateway city Jeddah with

Mecca and Medina. Jeddah's King Abdul Aziz international airport is itself undergoing expansion to quadruple its capacity to 80million passengers a year.

Fuelled by petrodollars, all of these vast projects are now either completed or well under way. So it seems strange that King

Abdullah should only now be ordering the creation of a masterplan for Mecca and its surroundings, covering buildings, transportand infrastructure given that most of the city's holy mountains have been dynamited into dust, and all but a handful of itsancient monuments buried beneath soaring structures. As Angawi says: "There is no other place in the world where development

starts with bulldozing before planning. But it is not too late if we stop now. Otherwise, we risk the sanctity of Mecca being gonefor ever."

The Jabal Omar project



Prayer room with a view: a pilgrim's perspectiveEverything about the hajj is overwhelming the numbers, the logistics, the infrastructure, the stakes so it's no surprise that the

architecture is catching up. Its sleek and state-of-the-art towers oer butler services, designer toiletries, entire oors reserved forSaudi royalty, wet rooms, helipads, quality linens, plush carpets and thick bathrobes.

During my 2010 visit to Mecca, a number of hotels in the Abraj al-Bait complex (left, with clocktower) were at 100% capacity.

The hotel employee showing me around one presidential suite said I could pray in front of the Qibla without ever leaving theroom, gesturing to a window with priceless views to prove his point. The sense of exclusivity extended to the reservation system,too. Rooms could only be booked through the hotel, but not as part of a package, the traditional if not the uniform way of securing

accommodation in Mecca.

None of this is visible at ground level. Pilgrims occupy every available space and the dimensions of the projects are too grand tobe appreciated simply by craning the neck. Instead, the best views are from the Jeddah-Mecca Highway, where the clocktower

appears to rear out of the barren landscape in such an outlandish fashion it looks as if it has been drawn on to the skyline. Thevast oor-to-ceiling windows of al-Safa Palace, perched on a hill above Mecca's holy sites, fully reveal the audacious vision to

reshape the pilgrimage.

The building work has inevitably changed the hajj experience for everyone. Aside from the increased pollution and heavymachinery, there is more segregation along economic and class lines. Muslims cannot choose where or when to perform the hajj

it can only be done in Mecca, at a certain point in the year but they can choose where to stay.

Riazat Butt

Mecca's Mega Architecture Casts Shadow Over Hajj _ Art and Design _ the Guardian

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