Designing higher education facilities in the Middle East offers great challenges to Western architects. For the most part, campus planning efforts in the Arabian Gulf Region are based on a combination of Western standards as well as the practices, programmatic requirements and site influences particular to local regulations, traditions, and culture. These influences include gender separation, the environmental conditions, automobile usage, facility size, and site conditions. Western practices and design approaches often set the general framework for campus plans. However, it is the local practices, traditions, and site-specific conditions that fill in the details.
Gender Separation – policies regarding gender separation can range from total segregation, such as different men’s and women’s campuses to partial separation, which includes separate sitting/study areas in libraries, cafeterias auditoriums and complete separation in classrooms and labs through scheduling. Implications on campus planning – outside of building design – focus on how buildings are entered, pedestrian connections between buildings, segregation within parking areas/structures, and access to the campus and to parking facilities. In mixed gender campuses, the general rule of thumb is no segregation where opposite sexes cross paths or use a facility for less than a few minutes. Where opposite sexes have the opportunities to spend more time together, some type of separation is recommended or required.
Environmental considerations –the severity of the Gulf climate greatly influences the layout and location of campus facilities. With respect to building locations, south and west exposures are to be minimized while buildings on a north-south axis are preferred. Openings to courtyards, breezeways, and building entrances should be located to take advantage of prevailing cooling winds – in the case of Kuwait, these winds are from the northwest. Covered walkways between buildings are desirable, distances between buildings should be minimized, and pedestrian walkways adjacent to buildings should be avoided because of the extreme heat given off from buildings. Shaded or structured parking is highly desirable as noonday sun on summer days will literally melt automobile dashboards. Traditional elements of Islamic design – water features, gardens, wind catches and screen elements – are desirable not only for their migrating affects on negative climatic conditions but also for their architectural and placemaking value.
Automobile usage – vehicular circulation and parking are almost always the largest land use on a Gulf Region university campus. Even with most car parking accommodated by garage structures, parking and roadways typically consume 40 percent or more of a campus site. Buildings will utilize another 30 percent of the site, with open space/recreation left with only about 30 percent of the total site area. Parking is typically provided at a 1:1 ratio – one space per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. Campuses are not served by public transportation and almost all students drive alone to school.
Building footprints – Gulf Region university facilities are generally 20 to 30 percent larger than comparable facilities on Western campuses. This is because these facilities typically have more generous corridors, entryways, and common areas where gross to net floor area factors are 60 to 80 percent as compared to factors of 30 to 50 percent at Western universities. Generous governmental budgets allow for the increased costs associated with these design inefficiencies. Local building and zoning codes, for the most part, limit building heights to three or four stores. Few, if any high-rise or even mid-rise academic buildings exist on university campuses in Kuwait or other Gulf States, the exception being Teaching Hospitals at medical universities.
Site conditions – most, if not all sites for university campus development are devoid of any interesting nature features. Most sites are completely flat and barren, and few sites are set within an urban context. Consequently, place making becomes of primary importance. A strong structural organization to campus plans is highly desirable. The configuration of open space between buildings is as important is the relationship of buildings to each other. Design features which contribute to place making and enhancement of the visual interest, such as landscaping, changes in topography, and view corridors contribute greatly to a successful campus plan.
Master planning of the campus for the American University for Medical Studies – Kuwait took into consideration factors and influences outlined above. This Project is a private university being developed on 10-heactare government-owned site in West Fintas suburb of Kuwait City. The program calls for a total floor area of about 1.2 million square feet and an anticipated full-time enrollment of about 3,600 students – both male and female. Facilities include Colleges of Dentistry, Pharmacy, Health Sciences, and Medicine, a Teaching Hospital, administration building, auditorium, a health sciences research center and support facilities including housing, sports venues, and outpatient clinics. About 2,800 parking spaces will be provided – more than 2,000 in structured parking facilities. Campus development will be phased over a ten year period.
The alternative master plans were prepared using three common Western approaches for the structuring of campus master plans – radial, linear, and quadrangle forms.
The radial scheme alternative was chosen as the basis for the final master plan because of its clarity in structural organization, its flexibility for expansion, and, most importantly – its adaptiveness to local traditions, site conditions, and local culture. With the radial scheme walking distances are minimized, gender separation is easily accommodated, pedestrian connections are protected, buildings are provided with breathing room, and main academic buildings are focused on a central courtyard with proper dimensioning and extensive surrounding ground level activities for meaningful placemaking.
Jerry Angell is a principal and Dan Muntean is an Urban Designer, Architect (UK) and Associate at Boston-based design firm TRO Jung|Brannen