22 September 2008
KAUST: Future is Now for New University City in Saudi Arabia
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is being built as an international, graduate-level, research university dedicated to inspiring a new age of scientific achievement in the Kingdom that will benefit the region as well as the world. With September 2009 set as the opening date for KAUST, The HOK Planning Group compressed a planning process that typically would take a year to complete to just five months. To do this, the team invested enormous amounts of time and leveraged true collaboration across the firm in order to create a master plan for this four million square foot campus, commercial town center and the entire public realm. |
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The Project The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is grounded in a rich historic tradition with considerable natural and human resources. Today the Kingdom is a vibrant and dynamic country with approximately 70 percent of its population under the age of 30 and 50 percent under the age of 15. The explosive growth created by this "baby boom" has created significant opportunities for leveraging the substantial financial recourses of the Kingdom. As a result, a series of economic development initiatives and physical infrastructure improvements are being implemented to meet the needs of future generations. One of these initiatives is the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
"In the fall of 2006, the initial challenge presented to us was to develop a master plan for a university of global importance," says HOK Planning Group, Senior Vice President Monte Wilson, who has coordinated the planning team's efforts on King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). "We also were asked to plan the full range of community and residential support that goes along with that -- essentially a new town for 10,000 to 12,000 people surrounding and supporting this globally significant research university."
The 6.5 million square foot, world-class research university and new town are being built on a picturesque 3,200-acre site along the Red Sea on the west coast of Saudi Arabia, north of Jeddah. The master plan encompasses the four million square foot campus, a commercial town center and the entire public realm. HOK is serving as executive planner and architect for the project.
The development rises on a flat, undeveloped desert site with very little vegetative cover on a coastal plain along a natural harbor of the Red Sea. The coastal site rests between Thuwal, one of the area's best-known fishing villages, and a Saudi Navy base. Adjacent to the site is King Abdullah Economic City, a future city now being built in stages to accommodate a total population of two million people.
The client -- Aramco Services Company of North America, a subsidiary of the Saudi Aramco Oil Company -- has initiated the ambitious multi-billion dollar campus and new town development as a nation-changing project that will help transform Saudi Arabia's economy and reform its higher education system. The goal for the research institutes and centers is to inspire a new age of scientific achievement in the Kingdom, the region and the world.
True Collaboration The master planning team compressed a process that typically would take about a year, down to just five months. To do this, the team invested enormous amounts of time and leveraged true collaboration across the firm.
The HOK Planning Group kicked off the project with a "Racing the Sun" design charrette in which planners from 10 offices across multiple time zones contributed to the plan over one 24-hour period. Each HOK office had a two-hour window to create its ideas and post them on a server. In the end, each contributed an idea that ultimately found its way into the final plan.
"That exercise was phenomenal and the client loved it," Wilson says. "It all stemmed from a crazy idea that colleagues Chip Crawford and Jim Fetterman had about leveraging our global reach to collect the best ideas from our group around a single project to make it the best it could be."
Since that around-the-world charrette, three dozen people from The HOK Planning Group have joined several hundred HOK colleagues from 11 offices and many different disciplines in satisfying the mandate to open the university in 2009.
The Plan To reflect its prominence as the center of activity, the university is centrally located on the site. The highly visible waterfront location also represents the overarching goal of creating a world renowned state-of-the-art research institution. Researchers can work closely with private corporations located in an adjacent research park.
Though the university will provide an ultramodern environment for conducting the world's best multidisciplinary research, the master plan organizes the campus around traditional planning principles that include an entry quadrangle and a central pedestrian spine connecting all buildings.
To succeed, the university must recruit the world's best and brightest researchers, faculty and students. In addition to having access to world-class research and teaching facilities, these people expect to work and live in a vibrant community with a range of lifestyle amenities. The plan provides this full spectrum of community and residential uses.
If the university is the hub of daily activity and knowledge, the commercial center represents the heart of community life. University Square, a grand plaza and center of activity, links the university with the commercial center. The square provides a seamless transition between the academic and community zones. It houses community functions including a theater, public library, post office, recreational services and other activities that support campus living.
As the intersection of campus life and daily activities, the commercial center balances a complex academic structure with an indigenous architecture rooted in the cultural traditions of Saudi Arabia. Influenced by the region's "Old Quarter" souks and markets, the center is characterized by a pedestrian scale environment and a complementary architectural style. An interlaced series of plazas, walkways, walkable connector streets, open spaces and bridges provide access to dining, retail, student housing and residential neighborhoods with more than 2,800 units.
A Regional Model for Sustainability Though construction of landfills in the Red Sea was an option available for accommodating the building program, the master plan does not do this. Instead, the plan protects the site, which features very shallow beach conditions and fragile mangrove lagoons. A spectacular coral-reef ecosystem is preserved for use as a marine sanctuary and research area.
"If you are going to try to attract the world's brightest scientists to move their families to Saudi Arabia, this sea and elements like the coral-reef are a big part of that recruitment story," Wilson says.
The master plan makes the development as compact as possible by integrating individual buildings into two larger, interconnected facilities that share a single roof covered by photovoltaics. The master plan manages water issues in this rain-scarce region in a responsible way. The site's grey water will be used for toilet flushing and irrigation, and a rainwater retention system will serve the campus hardscape.
Implementation: From Sketch to Site Construction in Just One Year Wilson calls KAUST "beyond a shadow of a doubt is the most challenging project" he has worked on. "We do a lot of large projects," he acknowledges. "They just typically don't go from a master plan sketch to site construction at this scale within a year."
The strong, clear Plan enabled the project to move quickly from a conceptual idea into detailed design and construction. Site development began just one year after the team created the initial sketches -- a schedule of unprecedented speed for such a complex assignment.
"We have leveraged talent and come up with a very strong plan that was clearly able to be taken into an implementation phase immediately," he says. "Now we are producing a compelling design on top of that plan framework that create a wonderful place for people to learn, work and live. And we did all this in a timeframe we would have previously thought was impossible."
Inspiring a New Age of Scientific Achievement The university, which expects to enroll over 2,000 graduate-level students from throughout the world, will be Saudi Arabia's first coeducational higher education institution. King Abdullah personally has provided a $10 billion endowment, creating the world's tenth-wealthiest university before it even opens.
When complete, this nation-changing project will help transform the country's economy and reform its higher education system while competing as an international graduate research university on the level of Stanford, MIT and the University of California-Berkeley. The overall goal is to inspire a new age of scientific achievement in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the region and worldwide.
The university and new town will open in September 2009 as a wonderful place to learn, work and live.
For more information, e-mail Monte Wilson.
Posted in: Architecture,Education,Science + Technology
