The Sun, the Moon, the Architecture of Time

For the last few decades at least, art and architecture have been controlled by the so called celebrities, who use their publicity machines to impose their dishonest ways on society and the young. The artist now distorts the human face and form, and in so doing, destroys the very beauty that God has created. The musician uses tones that are in disharmony with the natural frequencies of our planet and the human body. Similarly, the architect disregards thousands of years of Mans thoughts, discoveries and experience and creates a bankrupt kind of architecture, driven by computer software, where the presentation becomes more important than the content. A 3D fly-through of anything can make it magical. I have been on many such assessment juries, and have wished that the brief had excluded 3D animation because of its power to deceive and seduce. I have always looked to create timeless architecture, a coherent link from the knowledge and expertise of our forefathers to the as yet undreamt of discoveries of our children yet to be born. I would spend a lot of time thinking of how to avoid the obvious and instead create an enduring architectural form that is relevant to our times. One day, before I went to sleep, I was once again thinking of how to create such a thing. In my sleep I had a dream in which I was driving my car through Andalusia in the south of Spain. To the right were the mountains, to the left, the sea, with the sun in front of me. I usually listen to the Quran when driving, in particular the Qisar Suwer (the short chapters). When the Surah Wash-shamsi wa duhaha came, which deals with the sun, the moon, the earth, mankind and the proper relationship between them, the CD began skipping and repeating the same verse over and over again. No matter how I tried to eject the CD or skip to the next track, it just kept repeating. When I woke up the next day, the energy in me had changed and things came effortlessly to my mind. The mathematics between the moon, the sun and the earth became more clear and the initial idea for the building was born. What follows is the details of its design and construction.