Architect Jurtin Hajro, designer of the Ballie Mosque in Elbasan, Albania, will be the seventh speaker in the conference series “Contemporary Religious Architecture in the Mediterranean World”. The event is co-organized by the Dominican Studies Institute-Istanbul (Dost-I) and Assoc  Prof.  Dr. Erhan Berat Fındıklı, project manager from the Department of Sociology at Istanbul Medeniyet University. It also receives support from Depo Pergamon, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Istanbul, and the Network of Centers for Christian-Muslim Relations (NCCMR).

Hajro challenges existing conventions in religious architecture with his design of the Ballie Mosque, constructed in 2023 in the historic centre of Elbasan, defined by the historical layers of Roman, Medieval, Ottoman, and modern Albania. 

Hajro’s explorations into the possibilities of contemporary mosque design align in some respect with debates on contemporary religious architecture in Turkey. While interpreting the approach to domes in Christian and Islamic architecture in the Mediterranean World generally and in Balkan countries specifically, Hajro traces the concept of historicity back to the Pantheon, a legacy of Ancient Rome, problematizing preconceptions within their own historical context.