An Abrahamic Turducken

A design has been chosen for the House of One, a project that aims to bring a church, a mosque, and a synagogue under one roof in the heart of Berlin:

Each of the three areas in the House will be the same size, but of a different shape, architect Wilfried Kuehn points out. “Each of the singular spaces is designed according to the religious needs, the particularities of each faith,” he says. “There are for instance two levels in the mosque and the synagogue but there’s only one level in the church. There will be an organ in the church. There are places to wash feet in the mosque.” He and his team of architects researched designs for the three types of worshipping place and found more similarities than expected.

“What’s interesting is that when you go back a long time, they share a lot of architectural typologies. They are not so different,” Kuehn says. “It’s not necessary for instance for a mosque to have a minaret – it’s only a possibility and not a necessity. And a church doesn’t need a tower. This is about going back to the origins when these three faiths were close and shared a lot architecturally”.

Update from a reader:

While never a bad idea, it’s not as new as people seem to think. For example, in Ann Arbor, a Jewish synagogue and an Episcopal church have been sharing space for going on 30 years. Maybe a little easier for two faiths to share the same sanctuary when they have different days of worship, of course, but it’s not a new idea.