KU News Release

LAWRENCE — To get to know the Somali father he left when he was just a child, Osman Nur needed the ‘excuse’ of his University of Kansas McNair Scholars Program research project.

Nur, his mother Madina Sheikh, three older brothers and an older sister fled their native Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1991 at the start of the Somali Civil War. His father Aabow Mo’alin Nur, a teacher, religious leader, community organizer and self-taught architect, stayed.

Osman Nur (Photo by David McKinney/University Relations)

“He’s the reason I’m in school,” Nur said. “I really didn’t like school that much. Growing up, I didn’t go to school. Everything I’ve accomplished in school is because of him. We’d talk on the phone only about once a month because it was so expensive. Before he even asked how I was, he’d ask about my education and how I was doing, which kept pushing me to do better, demanding I take school seriously. He didn’t allow me to ask questions about him. He never liked people writing about him.”

Of leaving Somalia, Nur said, “Survival was the main thing, living from hour to hour, just getting away from the war. We were just happy to be alive.” Family members migrated to Kenya, where they stayed until 1998. They received political asylum and were able to come to the United States in 1999 through the sponsorship of an older sister, Hamsa Mohamed, a primary care physician in Saginaw, Mich.

“The only thing we knew about America was from Hollywood movies,” Nur said. No one in the family spoke English. They first went to a large Somali community in Rochester, Minn., then moved to Overland Park in summer 2002. Nur graduated from Shawnee Mission North High School in spring 2003, then began attending KU in fall 2003. His mother has since moved back to Rochester.

The mosque under construction in Somalia (Photo courtesy of Osman Nur)

Then came the project award. KU’s McNair Scholars Program is federally funded and helps prepare first-generation, low-income students from underrepresented ethnic groups for future careers as faculty members and researchers.

Nur’s father designed more than two dozen of the 37 mosques he managed in Somalia. Nur went to Somalia to do research, mentored by Marie-Alice L’Heureux, associate professor of architecture. His main goal, though, was to interview his father for what became his McNair project essay, “The Transformation of Islamic Architecture: The Work of the Somali Sufi Mosque Designer, Mo’alin Nur, ‘Aabow’ ”

Describing his father’s initial reaction, Nur said, “When I told him, he said, ‘You’re telling me you’ve gone to America to learn about Nur, that your school in America is going to teach you about me?’ He always referred to himself as ‘Nur’ with any of the titles he was given. He only answered the questions because I told him it was required for my assignment, for my education.”

In his essay, Nur wrote, “The gentleman I call father kept his past a secret although he always tried to give me a better life than the one he had.”

Nur saw his father twice in the past 11 years before the elder Nur’s death in October 2009. Traveling to Somalia for his father’s funeral, Nur took a sketchbook and began to think of ways to honor his father by drawing designs for a mosque, the principal religious and communal building associated with Islam.

“He’s how I got into architecture, to study something he knows. I knew I had to do something for him,” Nur said, thinking that every time people came to the mosque they would pay respect to his father. Nur said his family in both the United States and Somalia, told him, “Only you can design it.”

The design and building of the mosque became an additional part of Nur’s architectural academic program. He was guided by L’Heureux and Steve Padgett, associate professor of architecture.

In the design, Nur introduced some design details not seen before in mosques built there. Instead of semicircular doorway arches, Nur’s are stepped arches based on golden ratio proportions used in the five domes of the mosque. The mosque’s minaret, Nur said, is the tallest around at more than 100 feet. Roofs had always been flat concrete slabs. His design uses waffle-slab construction.

“It was scary, something they’d never seen. People in the community had lots of experience building things and probably thought, ‘Why should we listen to this kid who’s never built anything.’ The reason they did was because I was the son of their respected religious leader. I know about the culture, that you don’t argue with the elders or even tell them what to do or how to do it.

“How many KU students could dream of building something like this when they’re in school? What’s the point of an education if you can’t share it?”

“Osman has applied the skills he learned to real life,” said Allyson Flaster, academic services coordinator of the McNair Scholars Program. “He created a mosque and mausoleum to honor his father. His father’s community embraced the design that’s currently being built. He is also creating a design and master plan for a high school in Abudwaq in central Somalia that has been without a formal high school for a decade as a result of the civil war.”

Nur said he credits KU with helping him learn critical thinking skills, encouraging him to question rather than following only rigid or traditional rules. In 2008, he earned an Undergraduate Research Award from the University Honors Program to study the aboriginal and modern architecture of Australia and a prestigious Gilman International Scholarship to study at the University of New South Wales with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Glenn Mercutt.

“In Australia and Asia, I was able to see how different other people live, that there are different ways to do things, that my way is not the only way.”

Chosen for the Multicultural Architectural Scholars Program, Nur said he values tutelage from its co-directors Bill Carswell and Hobart Jackson, associate professors of architecture, plus support from Patti Baker, assistant to John Gaunt, dean of the School of Architecture, Design and Planning. Carswell also was a mentor for Nur’s undergraduate research in University Honors Program.

Nur said he plans to eventually do graduate work in vernacular or indigenous architecture. His family wants him to pursue a doctorate. He’d also like to work with a cultural or tourist architectural firm, involving community buildings that are regional and unique to each “so they feel it is theirs.”

“Osman is a remarkable man with a truly compelling life story,” said Keith Diaz-Moore, associate professor and chair of architecture. “He is an insightful student who engages in architecture with pure enthusiasm and delight. The fact that he’s already engaging in such meaningful work reflects the great promise he holds as a future professional.

For his superior achievements — and his father’s legacy — Nur will carry the banner for the School of Architecture, Design and Planning, leading his fellow graduates at Commencement. He is a candidate for the professional master’s of architecture degree.