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\nABU DHABI: Ghanaian British architect David Adjaye on Tuesday delivered the final keynote speech at the Culture Summit Abu Dhabi in which he talked about the Abrahamic Family House interfaith complex in the UAE capital.<\/p>\n
\nAdjaye is known for buildings such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway.<\/p>\n
\n<\/blockquote>\n\nThe 56-year-old designed the Abrahamic Family House that features a church, mosque, synagogue, and museum, with the aim of bringing together the three Abrahamic faiths of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.<\/p>\n
\nAddressing the summit audience, he said: \u201cWe were very, very humbled and honored to have won the competition to design the Abrahamic Family House.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe idea was to create three temples or worship spaces to Islam, to Judaism, to Christianity, and then to create a museum that will connect them and talk about the roots of that connection.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSo, to talk about the religious connections across those three faiths, and then to create a series of networks and spaces that basically allowed for the practice of these three religions to happen, and also for education and other facilities to happen around it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nAnd he noted the rare nature of the building.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cWhat is amazing for me is that there\u2019s only perhaps a few medieval cities that you might see this, maybe Cairo. I know of few other places in the world where you would, through the patina of history, see a synagogue, a mosque, and church together.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSo, I think this is a really profound moment where architecture is brought in to really coordinate this incredible moment to allow the rituals of daily life to happen in relation to each other,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\nOn how he would measure the Abrahamic Family House\u2019s success, Adjaye said: \u201cI want to see all generations just use it. For me, it\u2019s so important that it\u2019s multi-generational. I want to see people in their elder years and very young people running around and using it.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI\u2019d also really love that people who don\u2019t have faith feel very comfortable there.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cSo that\u2019s really important to me that the place is also welcomes people who don\u2019t have faith, and that it doesn\u2019t make them feel awkward.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nEarlier at the summit, celebrity architect Frank Gehry spoke about his vision for the upcoming Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, saying \u201cI understood that the same form multiplied, was something that was part of the language of the architecture of the region,\u201d in reference to the structures of minarets and domes in mosques.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n