ARABTEC Construction, in joint venture with Kuwait’s Combined Group Contracting Company (CGC), is due to sign a KD119.9-million ($432 million) contract this month to build two colleges at the multi-billion-dollar Sabah Al Salem University City in Kuwait.

Under the terms of the deal, Arabtec and CGC will undertake to construct, supervise and maintain the construction of the colleges of arts and education, according to Dr Rana Al-Faris, director of the construction programme at Kuwait University.

Destined to be the region’s largest university when complete in 2014, Sabah Al Salem University City is being built at an estimated cost of KD1.8 billion ($6.68 billion) in Shadadiyah. It will feature more than 25 faculty buildings, a teaching hospital, and sports facilities covering an area of nearly 5 million sq m with accommodation for up to 50,000 students.

The College of Arts comprising a construction area of 108,000-sq-m will accommodate more than 4,460 students, while the 115,000-sq-m College of Education will accommodate 4,050 students, in addition to a total of 1,275 faculty and staff members at both colleges.

Al Faris said the contract includes architectural, constructional and service designs of buildings that include many educational and administrative facilities.

Lead architect Perkins+Will of the US and Dar Al Handasah of Lebanon created the design for the colleges and will also supervise the implementation of the project.

Kuwait’s large swings in temperature from five deg C to 60 deg C ­and relative humidity from five to 85 per cent was a challenge to the design team who had to find innovative ways to balance community and comfort with low energy use and environment sensitivity.

The design for the College of Education focuses on the creation of a strong, individual identity for the college within the multi-college masterplan, a student-centred learning environment that would foster a community of learning, and a highly sustainable design with sufficient natural light to all classrooms, offices and main spaces.

The design solution creates two five-storey rectangular buildings containing modular, repetitive ‘a priori’ learning spaces that are juxtaposed against a free-form undulating Boardwalk enclosing a variety of ‘a posteriori’ learning support spaces – including lounges, group study niches and computer stations – that is carved through the length and height of the structures, connecting all floors and functions.

The interplay of solid and void between the mass of the buildings and the meandering of the ‘Boardwalk’ define the architectural identity of the college, and the belief that classroom-based learning must be complemented by an equally vital learning support environment in which learning continues beyond the classroom.

Accessed from the Boardwalk, a series of large internal garden courtyards called Oases function as major amenity nodes – for the cafeteria, library, lobby, and auditorium – filled with daylight and sheathed in greenery, all highly visible from the learning spaces that surround and overlook them.

The building’s self-shading skin has been calibrated to its specific solar exposure in order to maximise daylight penetration but minimise both solar heat gain and glare.

The addition of a ground glass diffusing fin at each window captures and disperses daylight deep into each learning space, while contributing to solar protection. Screens inspired by traditional regional patterns will shade the interior while providing a full view of the surroundings outside. Advanced computer technology has helped the building’s three-dimensional enclosure maximise views from inside while minimising the sun’s effects increasing energy performance.

For the College of Arts buildings, the designers looked to the Dewaniya tent (a traditional Kuwait gathering place and desert shelter) for sustainable strategies and design inspiration. “The tent’s social function and form are sophisticated responses to the specific environmental and cultural conditions of the region, and also an appropriate metaphor for the spirit and function of a college of liberal arts: a gathering place for discussion and exchange of ideas,” said a spokesman for Perkins+Will.

The interior climate is controlled in successive layers, from the exterior façade treatment and entry sequence, to informal gathering spaces, and finally to the buildings’ fully conditioned core of classrooms and offices. The first layer (the buildings’ exterior) emulates woven tent fabric with limestone “threads”. Subsequent interior layers provide both thermal and visual protection, with threads of varying density allowing views to the outside and appropriate illumination for spaces inside.

The mass of the building is lifted off the ground, with a planted buffer zone around the entire perimeter, punctuated by a series of naturally ventilated “tent gardens” that extend the full height of the structure, bringing filtered light into the building core. These courtyard gardens are major circulation nodes and gathering spaces, with collaborative touchdown areas, lounges, informal meeting areas and cafes. Corridors connecting these courtyards link classrooms, training spaces, administrative areas, a TV studio, black box theatres, dining areas, a student gallery space and libraries. Administrative and classroom areas have been designed for maximum flexibility and adaptability.

The project is expected to win US Green Building Council (USGBC) Leed (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold rating for new construction when completed in 2014.