The mosque is suffused by light entering from clerestory windows cut into the steps of the pyramid, and the traditional mihrab an ornamented niche indicating Mecca's orientation has sprouted into a full-length, transparent kiosk, animated by modernist stained glass.
The planned center courtyard was eight hundred feet across (more than three typical city blocks, or almost the length of three football fields), and he showed it to me with overlays indicating how it could surround St.