The Rossville LNG tanks constitute a contemporary industrial ruin: fully constructed yet never operational, maintained yet unused. Built in the 1970s as part of a proposed liquefied natural gas import facility, the tanks were suspended by public opposition, regulatory intervention, and decades of unrealized redevelopment proposals. This project reinterprets the abandoned structures through the framework of a waqf, preserving their monumental void while assigning them a new civic and spiritual function.
The project establishes the tanks as a center for the study and performance of sacred vocal practices, particularly Qur’anic recitation and the adhan. A spatial curriculum connects the nearby Islamic Center of Staten Island to the tanks through a processional sequence of learning, training, and collective recitation. Programmatic insertions occupy only localized portions of the structures, allowing the immense acoustic void to remain intact. Rather than erasing the tanks, the project transforms suspended infrastructure into a space of stewardship, transmission, and resonance.
