Gaudy Mecca | Saudi Arabia

Many Muslims are concerned that massive new construction projects are destroying the spiritual nature of their holy Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Yesterdays New York Times review by Nicolai Ouroussaff was highly critical:

It is an architectural absurdity. Just south of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Muslim world’s holiest site, a kitsch rendition of London’s Big Ben is nearing completion. Called the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, it will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the centerpiece of a complex that is housing a gargantuan shopping mall, an 800-room hotel and a prayer hall for several thousand people. Its muscular form, an unabashed knockoff of the original, blown up to a grotesque scale, will be decorated with Arabic inscriptions and topped by a crescent-shape spire in what feels like a cynical nod to Islam’s architectural past.  

One of the most fierce critics, according to Ouroussaff is a Mecca-born Muslim architect, Sami Angawi who called it, "...the commercialization of the house of God."