The mega-site of the university is set to consider all factors required to support all areas of life and is ready for any extensions that might emerge in the future. With a total site area of 154 Ha, this urban design holds enough spaces for faculties, administration, sport and recreation, retail and investment, housing (a capacity for 12,000 students and 1,120 Teaching Staff families), and traffic and transport. The urban design of the site is presented via layers that give a comprehensible view of the stages through which the design went.
In addition, the university is, remarkably, environment friendly in the full sense of the word, and constitutes a base for sustainability and biodiversity in many different ways. The water bodies, the man-made river, the vast green areas that penetrate each zone, and the spacious margins left for any further extension designed for this purpose.
Faculties Design:
Following the up-to-date standards of the educational buildings in the world, our design creates a suitable environment for students to learn, interact and enjoy their university lives. In eight mega buildings, more than 45 academic disciplines and fields of study were grouped together carefully to give the best interactive environment. Therefore, each student can take the advantage of all academic disciplines contained in a single building and that enables him or her to get a wider knowledge during his study period. On the other hand, a comprehensive range of seminar rooms, classrooms, lecture halls, studios, labs, theatres, and amphitheaters were provided and equipped with all fixtures to fit each academic discipline requirements.
Composite Design Concept:
The composite design approach is the study that was developed to reduce the gross building area by combining the schools and institutes that belong to the same faculty. This is to create a comprehensive environment for students of the same discipline, and, economically speaking, reduce the substantial costs of having them separate.
Like all faculties, the practical departments and the theoretical departments are separate but have close links with each other to facilitate movement between departments. The same applies to the annex and laboratories departments, which are separate but have close connections with the other related colleges, schools, and institutes. Despite the fact that all buildings are classified mega structures, all safety standards are taken into consideration, that is, safety is guaranteed by means of escape stairs and the presence of all types of fire-rated separators.
Student Housing Design:
Assuring students’ privacy, safety, comfort, and luxury, students’ housings were designed on a simple strategy with modern hi-tech to fulfill these goals. About 11000 students can enjoy their residence in 12 separate units that are spread in a rectangular array of squares in the residential zone of the students.
Architectural Study:
Each students’ housing unit (megastructure) contains four main divisions; the common area, the administrative part, the residential wings, and technical rooms.
The common area has rooms for study purposes such as the library and the studios. In addition, the gym, the retails, the multi-purpose hall and the green roofs are all parts of the common area and are considered semi-public to some extent.
Teacher Housing Design:
Along the lagoon beach at the teacher housing zone, eight identical residential compounds were linearly distributed. Each one contains 140 apartments of 12 different types for 3 categories of families; 1-2 members, 3-4 members, and 5-8 members.
Architectural Study:
The Teacher Housing is designed as compounds that provide the staff and professors’ families with all factors that insure health measures, privacy, social interaction, and, above all, a convenient environment where the professors are certain that their children grow up healthily, in addition to a kindergarten that is, also, there in each compound.
With a rotation of 450° of each compound and the difference in levels in each row of buildings in the same compound, a wider view of Lagos Lagoon is available for most apartments. And this adds another factor for privacy at the same time.