History of the minarets
Todays Center Mosque was not built as an islamic temple: At the beginning of the 20th century the building in the Böckmannstraße 40 hosted the Hammonia Bath. In 1977 the islamic community bought the building and inaugurated it as a mosque. In 1990 a dome and the two minarets were added, thus completing the picture of a regular mosque.
In 1992 the Sietas Shipyard in Hamburg constructed the two steel towers. They are both 20 meters high and weigh 7.1 tons. An extension was put to the lower end of the towers so that they can be fixed to the building with screws.
The minarets of the Center mosque may easily be the only ones in the world which are made out of steel. Furthermore they are the only ones which can be screwed and unscrewed to a building. And – as common in shipbuilding – they received a coating resistent to seawater.
Zehn Jahre später begann der weiße Anstrich der Türme allerdings abzublättern. Despite of this coating only ten years after construction the paint began to peel.

History of the project
You only have seconds to catch a glimpse of the minarets of the Center Mosque when you are on your way on the Steindamm. A temporary traffic light at a construction site switched to red while Boran Burchhardt approached it and so he had some time to enjoy the best possible view of the minarets while waiting for the green light.
He noticed the shabby appearance of the minarets. And because he was on his way home from a paint job, he thought: This is where I have to continue. And when he was invited to an art project around the Steindamm in spring 2008, it was clear to him that the minarets needed to be painted up.
Originally Burchhardt had planned something else: With the help of Hamburg’s Fire Department and one of their mobile ladders volunteering passers-by equipped with brush and paint would have been carried up to the minarets. After several days the minarets would have been painted white again.
But when the artist explained his ideas to Ramazan Ucar, Imam of the Center Mosque, he also showed a catalogue depicting one of his former exhibitions. In this exhibition he had displayed artwork made out of hexagonal structures. The Imam asked Burchhardt whether it would be possible to have the paint-up done with this pattern? Ucar felt drawn to the honeycomb, while his representative who had also attended this meeting, liked the idea of having a football-like coating on the towers.

Finally three sketches were presented to the islamic community. They debated them openly in public and then decided for a green and white coating (in Islam green is the colour of the prophet Muhammad) which should be put on all surfaces of the minarets.
The authorities of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg were not happy at all with this unusual change of the urban features. They demanded a formal application. Boran Burchhardt started collecting expert reports: Kunstkomission, Kunsthalle, Kunsthaus – all of them recommended the realization of the project, for which the artist had meanwhile received a working stipend from the City of Hamburg in January 2009.
The gallery “artfinder” presented the project during Berlin’s art-fair “Preview” in October 2008, where it got widely acclaimed. Media interest began to rise after March 2009. But the turn of the tide came with the testimony of an expert of the islamic religion that made clear that the board of the Center Mosque had no tendencies towards religious fundamentalism.
After the district council of St Georg had already voted in unison in favor of the project, the committee of the planning department followed this recommendation and also voted in unison in favor of the project. So finally the application was accepted and its request allowed to be put into action.