The Islamic Cultural Centre and The London Central Mosque

The Islamic Cultural Centre and The London Central Mosque is a mosque and Islamic cultural centre built between 1970 and 1977 to designs by Sir Frederick Gibberd and Partners. The job architects were L Siwani and D C Loader. The practice added a further wing to the building in the 1990s.

The building is constructed of concrete with elevations clad in concrete panels faced with polished Portland stone aggregate and glass infill held in dark brown anodised aluminium frames. The dome is formed of lightweight precast concrete segments and clad in gold-coloured copper alloy sheeting.

The building is situated on the western edge of Regent's Park, surrounded by trees and approached from the west. Four flat-roofed ranges are arranged around a rectangular courtyard oriented informally to the compass points and referred to here as north, south, east and west ranges.

The north and east ranges have two storeys and a lower ground floor or basement level, adjoining to form an L-shaped footprint. A 44 metre-high minaret rises over the east range, which contains a large main entrance foyer leading into the prayer hall. The prayer hall is a double-height space roofed with a dome, has a square footprint and projects eastwards away from the courtyard. On the first floor of the east range is a library and access to the women's gallery overlooking the prayer hall. The lower ground floor contains a lower foyer with access to flexible exhibition and event spaces beneath the prayer hall. The north range contains offices on the ground floor, a meeting hall above, and canteen and meeting rooms in the basement. Services are located on the roof within red-brown pod-like enclosures.

The south range is detached and contains residential accommodation. The west range, joined to the north range, is a later addition designed by Gibberd and Partners in the 1990s, with offices over a slightly sunken ground floor undercroft car park.

The central courtyard is an important aspect of the architecture and plan, modestly paved in concrete slab with cast concrete benches along the west side and an external stair giving access to the underground car park, surrounded by a pierced cast concrete balustrade. Similar features are found to the north and south of the prayer hall where stairs lead down to the basement and further courtyards, including a semi-circular sunken one to the east.

From outside the site, the building is partly screened by trees, but its golden dome and white minaret, both topped with a crescent finial, rise above the tree line and signal the building's presence and purpose. The minaret is symbolic but contains a lift giving access to a roofed balcony pierced with arched openings. Although of concrete, the balcony is suggestive of traditional carpentry work.

The site is entered from the west through a gated entrance, leading to the courtyard through a full-height free-standing arched gateway at the corner between the south and west ranges, added at the same time as the west range. The courtyard elevations of the north, east and west ranges are defined by a bold rhythm of narrow full-height four-centred arches infilled with bronzed glazing held in brown metal frames. The arched panels are connected at the top by a continuous precast structural beam serving as a parapet. A similar arrangement exists on the outer faces of the ranges, although here some arches are blind, faced with small white mosaic tiles, or only partly glazed.

The south range is of fair-faced concrete block with full-height bays formed of cast concrete panels. Part of the ground floor forms an undercroft giving access into the flats. Windows to main rooms have four-centred arches, and secondary spaces have windows with square heads. At the east end is a cast concrete external stair.

The most impressive interiors are found in the east range and prayer hall. The large entrance foyer has polished stone flooring and stone-clad columns. Three sets of glazed timber double doors open off the courtyard into the foyer, replicated on the facing side of the range, giving access into the prayer hall. A stair with glass balustrade and polished brass handrail leads down to the basement. The prayer hall has a near square footprint with its flat roof supported on four concrete columns set in from the corners. At the centre of the roof slab is a large circular hole from which rises the dome, lined in a wide band of tiles with geometric patterns and extracts from the Quran and pierced with small circular blue-glazed windows. The upper part of the dome is painted blue. The mihrab in the Quibla wall has a decorative brass surround, which is a later addition. The ladies' gallery is on the west side opposite the Quibla wall with a pierced wooden screen to restrict views into the space from the main prayer hall.

The library and meeting space on the first floor of the east and north ranges respectively have distinctive vaulted ceilings, the vaults running between the arched openings of opposing pairs of windows. Staircases throughout the building generally have balustrades of slender square-section steel balusters and flat handrails. Doors are generally of dark-stained timber, either solid flush panel or with several different configurations of polygonal glazed panels. The interiors of offices and less public spaces are simple without features of particular note. The male and female wash rooms for wudhu (ritual ablution) have been refitted.