A quick walk at night around Putrajaya Steel Mosque, the other beautiful side of the city!
Many Malaysians recognize Putrajaya, the administrative city of Malaysia from its few important buildings like the Perdana Putra (Prime Minister’s Office), Putra Mosque as well as the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) on the other end of the 2km-long axis. However, beginning from 2010, another iconic landmark is added to the skyline of Putrajaya, which is the Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidin Mosque, or popularly known as the Steel Mosque.
The plan for yesterday’s night before watching the movie ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides’ (the movie review is on the previous post) at Alamanda Putrajaya was to take some beautiful photographs of the mosque which can be seen along the roads. At the night, Putrajaya does not look like what it is in normal days with many canopies set up and road blocks for the One Million Youth Gathering which many events were held. There are quite a number of people surrounding the area. Hence, the atmosphere is not quiet like in usual days along the boulevard, and it actually destroys my mood of being there in feeling the awesomeness of the architecture.
I can’t locate my camera and so, I have to use my phone to take some images. Photos from my 8.1 megapixels phone’s camera are also not very bad in quality. As a Chinese, being there in Putrajaya makes you to feel like you are a foreigner, in a place only with Malays while Chinese are more concentrated in Bukit Bintang area for usual Saturday’s night. So, it is a bit weird. It is so hard to find another Chinese in the area. I managed to take some pictures of the exterior of the mosque including a large path from the front of the Palace of Justice to the iconic new mosque. It is seen as a journey walking from the beginning to the end which reaches the mosque. Too bad, it is not permitted to enter the mosque.
I do not know much on the architecture of the mosque except recognizing the arches and the materials used in the construction as well as the geometrical-patterned wall framing which captures my attention from its reflection of shadow to the outside wall due to strong lighting from interior.
The exterior lighting of the structure is captivating too. I do see also unnecessary runs of structures over the arches in the mosque, which I don’t understand why it is applied. Before it’s time to leave, I had the opportunity to drop by under the striking bridge, called as Seri Wawasan Bridge, a futuristic-looking cable-stayed bridge with a sail ship appearance. It’s time to take some photos again, this time not only of the bridge but also of part of the night skyline of the city.
Many would go take pictures of the Putra Mosque and the Prime Minister’s Office once they are in Putrajaya…not for me, because I find this other part of the city (the steel mosque area in the middle of the boulevard) to be more interesting in terms of architecture. Do you notice that there is a strong sense of symmetry which suggested formality on the architecture in Putrajaya as what you can see from even these few pictures I taken and posted here?
