Services: Strategic planning
Year: 2014 – 2015
Client: Bawabat Makkah Company
Partner: EXTRAURBAN Design
The Al Salam Colleges’ vision is to create a holistic education and research facility that will lead to the discovery and invention of the next generation of sustainable technologies and sciences. In order to create this cutting edge research a fundamental concept of the Al Salam Colleges design is to create innovation through collaboration and interaction between different faculties and research programs. The approach is to stimulate this innovation at a number of different levels; on a global scale through the Al Salam Research Network, and at a personal level through the direct interaction between different faculties and their students on an individual basis.
The interaction and collaboration is created by developing a new type of research facility where super flexible laboratories are designed that can be adapted for all the specific needs of the different types of programs and their individual faculty. By creating these flexible laboratory spaces, different programs will be mixed within the actual laboratories; rather than the more typical university model where individual buildings are designed for individual types of science or programs. Essentially the conceptual model for the Al Salam Colleges research programs remains the same as the growth of the university occurs, with either increasing student numbers, or the addition of new programs adding to the overall blended mix of faculty and students.
