Back to the future

The Gulf University of Science and Technology is an education space that looks to the future while embracing the past. Architect's Lauren Hills chats to Raj Patel of KEO to find out more.

To learn is to enrich your mind and expand your capabilities, and the ideal learning space would be one where you are stimulated and challenged from the moment you step into the building to the moment you leave.

Raj Patel, head design architect at KEO, had this in mind when he first put pencil to paper to draw the sketches that would ultimately become the Gulf University of Science and Technology (GUST), the first private university in Kuwait.

As his ideas evolved, it was the spaces in between the learning spaces-the "non-educational spaces" as Patel describes it-that became integral to his design.

"What I think makes education spaces successful are all the spaces between the classroom and when you go home. Spaces for interacting, spaces for gathering with your friends," explains Patel.

"I wanted to create junctures where teachers and students can cut across and mingle. The interaction is what makes educational space exciting; it keeps the juices flowing."

The heart of the project

The concourse, or the central space, is an area that Patel particularly concentrated on in his design, as it was the space that would create a coherency between all the elements. The concourse runs between the classroom wings on one side and the teacher's facilities on the other-all of which is connected by a series of pathways that link the areas.

Patel explains that it was a challenge to create a multi-functional, education space for 3,000 students that didn't feel like a sprawling, overwhelmingly large space.

"The challenge was not the classrooms, or the cafeteria, or the gym," says Patel, but, rather, "it was the thing that would link all these elements together. In GUST it is the concourse."

Embracing history

As GUST is an education space, Patel felt that it was imperative that the design reflected its historical context, while also embracing a move towards the future.

READERS' COMMENTS

MORE FROM ARABIANBUSINESS.COM