Built three feet above the structures around it, this glassy mosque in Saudi Arabia is surrounded by a reflective pool that glows at night. At certain angles, the mosque—which visitors enter by crossing a glass bridge and ascending a "moat" of granite steps—appears to be floating over the water. Designed by the American firm HOK, the monolithic mosque and 115-foot minaret combine Islamic design elements with contemporary ones, most notably in the layered geometric façade and punched windows and skylights. The firm intended the building's interior to be a "technological interpretation of a traditional mashrabiya screen wall," the architects write. "At night, the glass box acts like a lantern washed with light at the bottom, and punctuated with points of light near the top."
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