Cambridge mosque wins support from local non-Muslims.

The community in Mill Road has been involved in plans

for the mosque from the outset, even in the choice of architect.

The Mill Road area of Cambridge has no landmarks or attractions and does not feature heavily on tourist guides to the city. But that could change if ambitious proposals for a £13m mosque get the green light.

The mosque, designed by the London Eye architects, Marks Barfield, will not have minarets, but instead will attempt to answer the question of what an English mosque should look like. Aside from a gold dome, there are no external markings to signify its function. What it will have is a cafe and a women-only massage therapy room.

But perhaps its most distinguishing feature is the support it enjoys from non-Muslims living and working in Mill Road who have been involved from the outset, even in the choice of architect and design.

Anne Prince, from the East Mill Road Action Group, is effusive in her praise for the mosque project team.

She said: "The Muslim Academic Trust has been fantastic at engaging with the local community, and not in a tokenistic way. It chose to be very open about its plans. The mosque will be the most contemporary building in this area. It will be so outstanding, a destination, that people will want to come and see it."

Her enthusiasm is a rarity, as proposals for other mosques that have made headlines have often been met with hostility.

Earlier this year an inquiry rejected plans to replace a listed Victorian building with a domed mosque and minaret in Camberley, Surrey. Its proximity to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst led to senior military figures claiming the minarets could be used by snipers or other terrorists. In his decision, the planning inspector, John Gray, said the "loss of the school would harm the architectural conservation area along the London Road".

In the West Midlands last month councillors were critical of a new mosque design, saying it was "almost an alien feature in this location" and "like a blot on the landscape".

The most notorious row is over a building that has yet to leave the drawing board – the Abbey Mills mosque, near the Olympic site in east London, which has been mired in controversy since 2006, partly because of its sheer size.

But the Cambridge mosque team appears to have won people over. The teaching area, public garden and cafe will be among the spaces open to non-Muslims.

It cannot have hurt that the appointed architects are behind one of the most popular visitor attractions in Britain, nor that the "face" of the project is Tim Winter, a Cambridge academic and Muslim convert who sometimes lends his voice to another institution, BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day.

Sarah Elgazzar, a project team member, said: "There are lots of misconceptions about Islam and Muslims.

"A lot of people who have those negative feelings have never interacted with Muslims. Reaching out in this way is a great opportunity for Muslims to give something back to Cambridge. I expected a little bit of negative feedback. I didn't see it but I was waiting for it."

Elgazzar said there had not been many issues to compromise on. But there have been changes.

There will be an underground car park to allay concerns about traffic and the mosque was moved from the street to make way for a garden so that, according to Prince, one would get "some sense of green space at the front".

The design, says the architect David Marks, is a departure from the "preponderance of Ottoman mosques" in the UK.

"We didn't want to create a replica or pastiche of something that existed elsewhere. The opportunity to do something English, British, excited us. You don't need to have a minaret to be a mosque. Can a mosque be a mosque without a dome? Yes. Now that there is a significant Muslim community it's got time to work out what it means to have an English mosque."

The main mosque in Cambridge is formed of terraced houses knocked together. It is in good condition but its capacity is tested on Fridays, when up to 700 people arrive for prayers. They sometimes pray on the streets, even when there are two sittings.

The prospect of a new mosque, then, is an exciting one for congregants.

Aminul Islam, a business owner who has lived in Cambridge for 15 years, has raised £250,000 in two years for the new building.

"It is modern and welcoming to people who are non-Muslims. This is the 21st century. You have to make it attractive to our non-Muslim brothers and sisters. We have to leave this mosque to the next generation."

Plans for the new mosque will be formally submitted this year.