KEO International Consultants designs new University for Kuwait Institute for Science and Technology

Central to the concept of the campus is the circulation concourse introduced as a three storey atrium connecting the various programme elements with sufficient daylight filtering in through its sides.

Programme component wings housing the Administration, Academic faculty, Classrooms, Academic support, Laboratories and the Graduate programme have been placed in a parallel arrangement at various nodal points along the concourse with based on functional adjacencies.

The academic wings housing the Classrooms, Laboratories and the Graduate programmes are 3-floor blocks sitting astride the central concourse. Each of these wings terminates across the concourse in a node opening on to the circulation spine. Two small (220 seat) and one large (520 seat) lecture halls are accessed from the first floor through pre-function spaces connected to the circulation. All of the component wings are separated by open ended landscaped courtyards creating shaded and controlled outdoor environments.

Design Director at KEO International Consultants, Raj Patel says "The inspiration for the project stemmed from the site's natural desert scape located outside the urban fabric of the city. The natural and contextual phenomenon of continuously shifting and realigning furrows in the sand formed by the movement of wind reflect in the striation of forms and organization of the design."

The entire campus has been appropriately colored in sand tones emphasizing a horizontal movement similar to the shifting plane of the desert landscape. The rectilinear bar buildings end in dynamic angled objects which have been expressed in colored metal cladding. These linear wings resemble tensed levers arranged opposing each other with the central spine as a fulcrum, thus creating an overall appearance of movement and balance.