Park 51 [Islamic Cultural Center]

The Islamic Community Center and prayer space is located in Lower Manhattan, a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero. Due to the strong controversy provoked by the project, the true challenge was to create a piece of architecture that would propose a platform for mediation of social, cultural, urban and political differences in one coherent environment that would equally cater for all parties. The 22-storey building façade shows a latticework of white starlike designs, echoing patterns that can be seen in Islamic architecture and decorative tiles across the Middle East. Using a parametric scripting tool written specifically for this exercise using advanced modeling software, we were able to manipulate the density of the geometries in real-time by adapting the skin to the interior program, privacy, and daylight control.