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Evaluation of the Standard Design of the Prayer Room in Shopping Mall

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Advances in Environmental Biology

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Evaluation of the Standard Design of the Prayer Room in Shopping Mall

1Aini Syazwina Binti Sarial, 1,3Nangkula Utaberta, 2Nor Atiah Ismail, 2Noor Fazamimah Mohd
Ariffin, 2Mohd Yazid Mohd Yunos, 1Sumarni Ismail
1
Department of Architecture, Faculty of Design and Architecture, 43400 Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
2
Department of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Design and Architecture, 43400 Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
3
Halal Product Research Institute, 43400 Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Article history:
Received 28 September 2015
Accepted 15 November 2015
Available online 24 November 2015
Keywords:
Dome, Mosque, Islamic architecture,
Malaysian mosque, Shopping Mall,
Prayer room.
Nowadays, there are many rapid development can be seen in the shopping mall, which
gives a positive picture on the architecture development in our country. Every shopping
mall built gives a new impact to the community life. Throughout this rapid
development with high technology skyscrapers and vibrant of educational midpoint,
Islamic religion has also shown positive development in becoming the main religion
that hold major priority in the modern development. Islamic prayer or „solah‟ has
become the most important obligation to Muslim life.”Solah” is an obligation that was
instructed my Almighty Allah to be done by Muslim 5 times a day in whatever
conditions. Arrangement of prayer areas for Muslims in the modern building such as
shopping mall should be highlighted. However, there are still some weaknesses seen in
the prayer room designed in most of the shopping malls. Every guideline has its own
specifications for prayer room. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the
standard design of the prayer room in the shopping mall. Every design should follow
the right guidelines to make sure the users will be comfortable and the prayer room
could be used by everyone including the elderly and disable. From this study, we could
discuss on the reasons why the current prayer room is not design according to the
guidelines. The information and collective data will be referred and reviewed followed
by the right guidelines.

© 2015 AENSI Publisher All rights reserved.

To Cite This Article: Aini Syazwina Binti Sarial, Nangkula Utaberta, Nor Atiah Ismail, Noor Fazamimah Mohd Ariffin, Mohd Yazid
Mohd Yunos, Sumarni Ismail., Evaluation of the Standard Design of the Prayer Room in Shopping Mall. Adv. Environ. Biol., 9(24), 22-25,
2015

INTRODUCTION

A mosque is a place of devotion for followers of Islam. However, there is another place that is also used by
Muslims to pray which is smaller in size and can fit smaller scale of people which is called “musholla”.
Musholla is usually designed in the small part of the building and there are regulations and limitation set on the
uses of the area. In Islamic Sharia law, after an area is formally designated as a mosque; it should be remained
so until the Last Day. A musholla or prayer room is a quiet location set aside from a busy public place like
hospital, university, and airport where people of different religious beliefs are able to spend time in
contemplation or prayer. In most of the cases, musholla is a temporary place which the community will transfer
once they find a more suitable and convenient place to build as a permanent location. Though Muslims today
commonly refer to their musholla as their prayer room which the literal meaning of a place where the fatigue is
made and allowed, a musholla cannot technically be considered a legal masjid. Likewise the reward for prayer
in a musholla is not the same as in a proper masjid.

Issue on prayer room in shoppping mall.:

Prayer room is a devotion space and it is a quiet location set aside from busy public place like hospital,
university, and airport where people of different religious beliefs are able to spend time in contemplation
or prayer. The prayer room does not provide the physical presence to the community, but it should provide the
feel of spiritual presence in order to achieve the anchoring and strengthening the belief where someone could
express his/her own spirituality obviously [1]. In a good way, a good musholla or prayer room will create a
conducive environment for religious activities. Hence, we could attract the community to help implementing
Corresponding Author: Nangkula Utaberta, Department of Architecture, Faculty of Design and Architecture, 43400
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia,
Tel: +603-89464084; E-mail: nangkula@upm.edu.my
23 Aini Syazwina Binti Sarial et al, 2015
Advances in Environmental Biology, 9(24) November 2015, Pages: 22-25

their social responsibility to the society. So the architect should understand the purpose of musholla towards the
community. It is not just a small room that become a stopping place for muslim to perform their solah.
The space in the prayer room basically should be designed by following the specification of the user
capacity for one of the prayer room size. However, most of the prayer room built nowadays are just a small
room without good ventilation provided in the room. Sometimes, the room cannot even accommodate a group
number of people to perform the prayer in the same time. Most of the time, the ablution place are also blocking
the entrance and the floor trap designed are also did not functioning well, thus the water from the ablution will
make the floor to become slippery and eventually flow into the prayer space. For example, one of the prayer
rooms that I have been visited recently in Community Hall, Precint 16, Putrajaya did not provide any facilities
for the eldest and the disable people to use. There is no space for the wheelchair user to enter the prayer room
because the entrance has been blocked by the ablution place which make it difficult for the disable person with
wheelchair to enter. This scenario has opened my eyes wide and make me realise that I should take this problem
as an important factor in designing the prayer room. Mohd Tajuddin in his book title „Rethinking Islamic
Architecture' says „architectural expression in the mosque is to portray and design it in such manner that it
projects the idea-of a public facility inviting to Muslims and offering the chance for non-Muslim to satisfy their
curiosity about the Islamic way of life'. Even the prayer room is smaller than the mosque in size, but the comfort
ability in the room need to be considered, as it will be not acting as the prayer room alone.

Fig. 1: Relation between spaces within a prayer zone.

A standout among the practically significant single-function space will be an encased you quit offering on
women. Women are not recommend to perform their prayer in mosque or mushollah. They have been told and
encouraged to perform prayer in their house to have more privacy and convenient especially for the women with
kids. However, they are still allowed to perform prayers in musholla or mosque when they are outside, in
condition the place for the women and men to perform prayer should be separated. During prayer time the
women must be positioned in a position that the men in prayers have no visual access to them until they leave
when the prayer is over. Finally, in performing the rites of ablution before the prayers, the women must remove
their veils and put them on again during prayers. From the observation most of prayer room did not have
concrete separator for a special enclosed space allocated in the room, but just a curtain at the back part of the
prayer room. This is very inconvenient for women, who have to remove their veils to perform the ablution rites.
Thus, it is important to include a specially enclosed space for women with their own ablution rooms away from
men walkaway. A private space for women would also enable them to remove their veils and head covers to
socialize among them. Mohd Tajuddin in his book title „Rethinking Islamic Architecture' says many of the
prayer room will be isolated from the shopping centre. Sometime it will be located at the upper level of the
shopping centre. But some of the prayer room will be located at the basement which was not convenient for the
user. If something happen around the parking basement it would interrupt the people to perform their sollah. It
was true that a quiet space is needed for a musholla but place like the parking basement may cause big risk to
the users. An area that integrated together with the services and other facilities such as parking area and
restroom give better comfort and solace to the users or the clients. With correct condition, also configuration
scheme, the clients might feel welcomed and comfort to perform their sollah. Using a right material on the
interior of the musholla, it will give a warm feeling towards the user to come into the musholla again.

Case study:
In the first case study, I had identified the analysis data and reviews from the design and environmental
aspects in prayer room. Sogo is the classic place to go especially for shopping or loungers. It is a shopping
centre that provides branded stuff with sales on every items and it was located at Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman,
Kuala Lumpur. Besides, the public transportation gives an easy accessibility to the visitors to come. But prayer
room that is located at the Sogo is too far from the center of the shopping mall. The prayer room is located in the
most remote areas which are at the parking area, which is hot, stuff, small and cramped too.
24 Aini Syazwina Binti Sarial et al, 2015
Advances in Environmental Biology, 9(24) November 2015, Pages: 22-25

A truly affecting prayer design should include 3 main aspects that should be considered to achieve a good
environment prayer room.
A Surau To An Individual A Surau To A Community A Surau To Its Environment
- A place for shelter
- A place of solace
- A place for gathering - A place to complement nature
- A place to seek refuge
- A place for learning - A place to begin or continue a journey of
- A place to find inner place
- A place to conduct discourse righteousness
- A place to rest
- A place to fulfil duties and obligations - A place to balance the elements
- A place for physical and spiritual
- A place to express - A place of harmonious composition and
cleansing
- A place to celebrate and solemnize tranquillity
- A place of humility
- A place to mourn and take heed. - A place of serena juxtaposition between
- A place for reflection of one‟s deeds
Creation and the Created.

At peak times, such as festivals and days of the week, it's dense and wet with water footprints visitors.
Mainly dusk, there are times when there is no room to stand while waiting for their turn to perform the sollah.
Even though the fan is provided, but the less ventilation in the room makes it more stuffy, narrow space and hot.
Because of the cramped room, sometime people that want to use ablution area will bump into the people
that are performing their sollah in that room. Islam is very particular about cleanliness, but there are still some
irresponsible human who have not discharging their responsibilities properly. Apart from the perfect design,
their role must be taken into account to ensure the cleanliness of the prayer room is always in order and not be a
burden to other users.

Fig. 2: Prayer room conditions at Sogo, Kuala Lumpur.

For the second case study, which is the prayer room located at Low Yatt Plaza. Even this shopping mall is
owned by the Chinese owner, however, there are a big number of visitors who are Muslim. Thus, there is a
prayer room built for the Muslims to perform their prayer. The prayer room is located in the UG, which is at the
upper ground, but has been moved to B2, which located in the basement level with parking. The previous prayer
room is narrow, but there is air conditioning which gives comfort to the visitors. Clean and well-organized space
also gives more satisfaction to the visitor. The newly built prayer room in the other hand is bigger and the space
is wider and clean. There is not only fan ceiling provided, but air conditioning also provided for the ventilation
purpose of the room.

Fig. 3: Prayer room conditions at Low Yatt Plaza (Sources from annieyss.blogspot.my,2009)
 25 Aini Syazwina Binti Sarial et al, 2015
Advances in Environmental Biology, 9(24) November 2015, Pages: 22-25

Fig. 4: Female ablution that adjacent with male ablution.

However, sadly the ablution place for the women that was provided is place adjacent with the male
ablution. This may give another problem to the women user to take their wudhu'. The women will need to take
off their scarf when they want to take their wudhu'. However, when this situation happened, it may give an
uncomfortable situation to the women to perform their ablution.

Conclusion:
Effective design can be derived if the architects follow the correct guidelines. The space of the prayer room
should be made bigger to ensure that there will be a lot of positive comment from the users of the prayer room.
Sensitivity of the community could be a reason for the authority to upgrade the prayer room that need a lot of
maintenance other than emphasizing something that is not important and not related to enhance the community
of Islam and its community in this country. The architects in charge of designing the prayer rooms should also
do more research on creating a comfortable and effective prayer room. Architectural standard, like Architectural
Graphic Standard, Neufert Architects Data, and Metric Handbook provide a useful detail for the basic
requirement for a mosque. Everything that the book data provide could be used in a standard for designing the
prayer room.

REFERENCES

[1] Abd. Hamid, 2015. Internet The Design and Environmental Aspects of The Prayer Room. Retrieve from
(https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&site=&source=hp&q=THE+DESIGN+AND+ENVIRON
MENTAL+ASPECTS+OF+THE+PRAYER+ROOM+&oq).
[2] Abd. Hamid, 2015. Internet The Significance of Prayer Room Design Standards at Shopping Complex.
International Colloqium of Art and Design Education Research. Retrieve, 12-15, from
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/276289967_The_Significance_of_Prayer_Room_Design_Standard
s_at_Shopping_Complex
[3] Yusuf Mangera, 2004. Internet Masjid and Musalla. Retrieve November 13, 2004 from
(http://www.albalagh.net/general/0074.shtml)
[4] Anyss, 2009. Internet Surau di Kompleks Beli-Belah. Retrieve February 4, 2009 from
(http://annieyss.blogspot.my/2009/02/surau-di-kompleks-beli-belah.html)
[5] Definition of Musholla, 2000. From (http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/musholla)
[6] Definition of Prayer Room, 2000. From (http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/prayer%20room)
[7] Definiton of Mosque, 2015. Retrieve (Just modified) from (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosque)
[8] Rasdi, M.T.H.M., 2010. Rethinking Islamic Architecture. Strategic Information and Research Development
Centre. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=dsDCSAAACAAJ&pgis=1

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