Desert Mosque and Madrasa Courtyard

A whole invented desert precinct laid out as one walk: a forecourt inside the stepped portal, a madrasa court with study cells down both sides, the main courtyard with its ablution fountain and an arcade on all four sides, and a deep hypostyle prayer hall ending at the qibla wall. A boundary wall runs round the lot with a gate on the east and the west, and open desert lies between the wall and the buildings.

What is placed. Thirty six paving modules make the main court, with the fountain on its axis and eight runnels leading out from it. Twenty arcade bays and four corner bays close the court, and two bays on each of the north and south sides are open sided hypostyle bays instead, so the axis runs clear from the portal to the fountain and on to the mihrab. The prayer hall behind is eighteen hypostyle bays with matting laid across all of them, freestanding columns closing the open ends and large lamps hung under the roof. Its last bay is left open to the sky, so the qibla wall, the mihrab niche under its half dome hood, and the minbar all stand in daylight rather than shut in a roofed room. On the roof: the large glazed dome on its drum with four squinch corner sections round it, and four small plaster domes. The minaret stands where the court meets the hall, stacked from a base, two shaft sections, a balcony and a cap.

The madrasa range is eight study cell fronts facing a smaller court, each cell floored and roofed behind its front with a small dome over four of them. The study places are out in the open in front of the cells, on matting under shade canopies: low desks, cushion sets, shelf runs, book chests, pen boxes and folding stands. Tiled dado runs and carved plaster bands dress the range on both sides. The service corner behind the east arcade holds the well, a cistern cover at the end of two runnels, shoe racks, rolled matting and a pigeon cote. Outside the walls the desert is laid with ground modules in two tones, each given a random quarter turn so the tiles do not read as a grid, with sand drifts banked against the boundary and date palms through the open ground.

Nothing here is written on, and nothing here is a person or an animal. Every tile field, carved band, lattice, grille and panel in this pack is a closed geometric or interlace repeat. The shelf volumes are blank boards, the folding stand is empty, and the pigeon cote is an empty niche tower. There is no figurative content of any kind, and no skinned meshes: the pack has none.

What moves. The two precinct gates open, the three folding screens fold, a study cell door swings, the book chest and the pen box lift their lids, the well winds its windlass, and both sizes of hanging lamp bob on their chains. That is a short list on purpose, and it is the right one rather than an omission: a courtyard is architecture, and the honest count of moving parts in one is small. Nothing was invented to pad it.

What does not move, and why. The water in the fountain, the basin and the runnels is a still glazed surface, because flowing water needs a shader rather than a rigid node transform. The lamp chains hang static for the reason a rope does: a flexible element needs a joint per link. The matting, the rolled mats and the cushions keep the shape they are modelled in, because cloth and matting need deformation, which a rigid transform cannot give. No flame is modelled on any lamp, candle or lantern, because fire is a shader. The minaret has no stair and nothing goes up it; the demo walk has no vertical movement, so the tower, the domes and the roofs are scenery read from the ground, which is exactly what they are modelled to be.

Size. 58 distinct models over 593 placements on a plot about 45 by 66 metres. That is nearly the whole pack in one scene, so the download is larger than a small demo: the trade is a precinct you can walk rather than a lineup of parts.

Every piece here is a published model from the pack, placed by hand. Walk with the keys or touch, and approach a piece to see it move if it has animation. Colliders, navigation and gameplay are yours to add.