Razavi Shirine Museum

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Razavi Shirine Museum

Firm

MARZ design and architecture

Type

Cultural › Museum

STATUS

Concept

Razavi Shrine Museum
The Holy Shrine of Imam Reza, or Razavi Shrine, situated in the heart of Mashhad, northeastern Iran, encompasses a vast array of interconnected mosques, museums, seminaries, a library, and a cemetery, all employing a central courtyard typology. With its origins dating back to 1230 AD, the shrine has expanded to nearly one million square meters, making it the largest mosque globally and attracting over 30 million pilgrims annual. The management council of Razavi institution has decided to replace the existing scattered museums in the complex, with a new building designed during a competition between 18 architecture studios. For this purpose, a land beside one of the most important entrances of the complex was considered as the location for the new museum. The proposed museum by MARZ design and architecture secured third position in this competition, Marz’s proposal harmoniously integrates a distinct identity for the museum while seamlessly merging with the existing spatial and architectural fabric of the complex.
MARZ’s design introduces a covered courtyard at the center of the new museum, interlacing the new addition with the complex’s traditional internal courtyard typology. The proposal eschews placing any mass on the ground, opting instead for a museum floor that floats above the ground, sheltering the new courtyard and allowing the urban fabric of the city to permeate through the museum, forging a seamless connection with the complex. This elevated floor is supported by five funnel-shaped mega columns that are strategically positioned around the central square courtyard, stretched 36.2 meters inside the main volume of the project that is buried underground due to height restrictions imposed by adjacency of the site to the shrine.
These mega columns serve a dual purpose, functioning both as structural supports and as principal organizational elements of the project, channeling cascades of natural light along their surfaces. The various museums, currently dispersed throughout the complex, will be consolidated into clusters of galleries and gallery-ramps surrounding or integrated within the columns. The Quran Museum, Museum of Islamic Art, and Museum of the History of Razavi Shrine are anchored around the first and third columns, aligning with the pilgrimage experience. Meanwhile, the Carpet and Textile Museum and the Treasures of Science and Technology will encircle the second and fourth columns. The fifth column, located in the southwest, will house the administrative offices.
The project aspires to create a coherent and fluid spatial organization for a highly complex brief, synthesizing the logic of the existing spatial arrangement into a new geometric system while respectfully nestling beside the resplendent Razavi complex.