NYC: Can you tell me about the materials? What is the motivation behind having them so ultra-modern?

MA: Glass reinforced concrete. The whole point is that it’s as delicate as lace but structurally as sound as concrete. It’s a natural material we use in actual Mashrabiya in any country that has those types of things. You can get extremely thin with that. We haven’t done the actual engineering of the facade yet so we don’t know how thin these elements are going to be, because some of them are pretty bulky, but the idea is that some of them will become pretty thin. It’s a double skin. You can see in terms of the interior program, you can see we tried to keep it as open as possible

So if you go in terms of program, the only religious component is really the Muslim prayer space — and we’re not calling it a mosque, because it’s really not a mosque. A mosque has very clear typology, with an open plaza, a minaret, and you’re never going to see these things – probably ever – [in New York], but definitely not in this building. It’s called a prayer space, on two lower levels, below the ground floor, so basically the first two basements. Obviously they’re split between female and male. Everything above the ground floor will be secular architecture, for secular programming. You have restaurants, child care facilities, culinary school, sports center with basketball courts, a pool, a media tech library, auditorium, then you have the offices, administration, different types of workshops, even live-work spaces for artists, for guest artists, a little like Villa de Medici. Some sort of relation with what the culture is, the cultures we’re trying to join in this project.

NYC: Most of the building is very well lit – is there something about prayer spaces and their design that requires them to be less well-lit?

MA: No, nothing like that. It was a question of, you have a call for prayer on Friday and you have 2,000 people walking into the building at one point. We didn’t want them using the elevators, otherwise we would have five times the number of elevators that we have. So it was a question of circulation and flow of people more than anything else.

NYC: 2,000 people – is that the capacity in the basements?

MA: Yes. It needed to be easily accessible from the street with different routes, different security check-ins than the rest of the building, so you don’t go through the main core of the building. Also, to better separate any type of religious program from the rest. You have to keep in mind – I’m saying this from an observer point of view, because I’m not a Muslim – I had to observe the way things worked out for Muslims in New York City who need to pray five times a day. How do you cut off your workday to go five times a day? So you need to be able to go in and out pretty fast, you can’t spend an hour to go in and another hour to go out.

NYC: When I stopped by your old offices in SoHo [SOMA recently relocated to its current Midtown location], I noticed that you were listed under the same suite as Park51’s developer, SoHo Properties.

MA: We shared a floor. Sharif [El-Gamal, owner of SoHo Properties] and I have known each other from a few years back, and that’s how we started—basically, a love of the buildings. We are just, if you want, strategic partners, that’s all.

NYC: Is he a partner in your firm?

MA: No, they’re two separate companies, but we like doing business together. I trust him and he trusts me. That’s why on this project there were a lot of architects coming in and out of the office wanting to do the project. It was easier for him to at least start with someone that he trusts and he’s known and he’s going to find the right level to please different people.

NYC: How has being involved with this project affected your business? Have you felt any change in relations with your clients?

MA: It’s only been a few days [since the rendering has been released]. Except for the crazy flow of calls and e-mails and people trying to get renderings and interviews, everyone thinks it’s great that we’ve been working with it, but there’s also split opinions about the project actually happening or not, in terms of development. But generally speaking, I have to say it’s been very positive so far. Ask me the question in another week.