Qualla: The Office That Became a Mosque

The Office That Became a Mosque: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Berthold, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk into the Cut Meutia Mosque in Jakarta and something feels slightly off. The prayer hall does not align with the building. Worshippers face roughly 45 degrees to the building's orientation, angled toward Mecca in a structure that was never designed with Mecca in mind. The mihrab and minbar -- normally positioned at the front of a prayer hall against the qibla wall -- stand instead in the center of the room, because there is no qibla wall. There are only the original walls of a Dutch Rationalist architecture office, built in 1922 by a firm called N.V. Bouwploeg, whose architects spent their days designing the upscale residential neighborhood of Gondangdia next door. The building they worked in has outlasted everything they designed from it.

Image: Daniel Berthold | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Office That Became a Mosque: A Heroine's Name

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Si Gam, CC BY-SA 3.0. The mosque is named after Cut Nyak Meutia, an Indonesian national heroine who fought against Dutch colonialism in Aceh until her death in 1910 at the age of forty. That a building constructed by Dutch colonizers now carries the name of a woman who took up arms against them is a q...

Image: Si Gam | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Office That Became a Mosque: Six Lives Before Prayer

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit fitri agung from Pekanbaru, Riau, Indonesia, Indonesia, CC BY 2.0. Few buildings in Jakarta have worn as many identities. Pieter Adriaan Jacobus Moojen, a Dutch architect who lived from 1879 to 1955, established N.V. Bouwploeg here in 1922. The firm planned and developed Gondangdia, the residential district in Menteng that attracted Jakarta's co...

Image: fitri agung from Pekanbaru, Riau, Indonesia, Indonesia | CC BY 2.0

The Office That Became a Mosque: Tropics in Rationalist Clothing

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit PL09Puryono, CC0. Moojen designed the building in the Dutch Rationalist style, but adapted it for equatorial heat. The most prominent feature is a ventilation tower rising from the center of the structure, a signature element of the Indies architectural style that emerged when European forms colli...

Image: PL09Puryono | CC0

The Office That Became a Mosque: Praying Sideways

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rahmatdenas, CC BY-SA 4.0. Every mosque must orient its prayer hall toward the qibla -- the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca. The N.V. Bouwploeg office, designed for drafting tables and filing cabinets, had no reason to consider compass bearings to Saudi Arabia. The solution was geometric compromise. The pr...

Image: Rahmatdenas | CC BY-SA 4.0