THE LIBRARY IS OPEN 22: Rooted Transience

Please join editors Nawaf Bin Ayyaf and Faysal Tabbarah; contributor Ziad Jameleddine, and respondents Navina Najat Haidar (Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Jorge Otero-Pailos, for a discussion on Rooted Transience.

Rooted Transience explores the form and philosophy of a musalla as a temporary prayer space within Islamic cultures. Arising wherever and whenever the need for prayer emerges, a musalla reimagines fixed spatial practices by fluidly adapting to its immediate environment. The elusive typology of a musalla embodies design principles that are deeply rooted both in transience and adaptability. Rooted Transience is an effort to highlight the multivalent natures of musalla spaces by exploring the entangled relationships between the historical, material, and contemporary registers within which they emerge. It brings together essays, reflections, and intimate transcribed conversations between creatives who together try to reveal the multilayered potential meanings behind this transient form.

The Rooted Transience publication accompanies the AlMusalla Prize 2025, first presented at the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah in January 2025. Titled On Weaving, the winning design of the inaugural AlMusalla Prize by EAST Architecture Studio, featured a central courtyard surrounded by a prayer hall which celebrates the local date palm tree by utilizing its waste as the primary building material. Palm fronds are introduced as alternatives to a column-and-beam structure, and palm fibers form a facade inspired by traditional techniques of weaving that envelops the entire pavilion.

Nawaf Bin Ayyaf is a researcher/scholar focused on architecture studies and cultural heritage practices. He is currently an Advisor for the Saudi Ministry of Culture and serving as Chair of the AlMusalla Prize. He holds a Master degree in Architecture Studies (SMArchS) from MIT, and a Master degree in in Design Studies (MDes) from Harvard GSD.

He has lectured at institutions like Harvard GSD, KSU’s School of Architecture and the Royal College of Art, and has published research in international design journals/exhibitions.

Faysal Tabbarah is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the College of Architecture, Art and Design at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), where he has also served as an Associate Dean (2021-2024), and Carleton University. He is the co-founder of Architecture + Other Things (A+OT), which is based in Sharjah.

He was the Curator for the National Pavilion United Arab Emirates exhibition in the 18th International Architecture Exhibition 2023, La Biennale di Venezia.