Grand Bur Dubai Masjid
United Arab Emirates
COMPLETED 2019
In a prayer hall like this one almost everything worth looking at is surface — carved plaster spandrels, geometric fretwork across the vaults, the shallow relief running up every pier. None of it has any colour to speak of, so it only exists at all if something is raking across it. The difficulty is that the room is also a composition of arches and lanterns that a fitting has no business appearing in. The answer here is a single small uplight, repeated at every column head, chosen as much for its finish as for its optics.
Main Prayer Hall
One Fitting, Every Column
Every pier in the hall carries the same move: a small uplight sitting on the capital ledge, throwing up the shaft above it and across the vault springing from it. That is what makes the geometry read — the fretwork and the carved plaster are shallow relief in a single stone colour, and without light arriving at a grazing angle they flatten into pattern on a wall. RL-SDL1416 is the fitting: 10W, adjustable, with beams at 16°, 24°, 36° or 50°, so the same housing can take a narrow column face or a wide spandrel and be aimed in rather than set out on a drawing. The reason it belongs in this room specifically is the finish schedule — it is offered in brass and bronze as well as white, black and silver, and on a stone capital in a hall of amber lanterns a brass body disappears where a white one would read as a row of small bright objects circling the room at three metres. The lantern chandeliers are the mosque's own decorative commission and are not catalogue items.
Project specification
Every product in this project
All products →
Planning lighting for a mosque or heritage interior?
This project sits alongside Regents LED's wider portfolio of worship, cultural and architectural lighting across the Gulf, Europe and the UK.
Enquire about your project