AGU Campus Masterplan

Dubai, UAE

 

MBLA collaborated with Marwan Al-Sayed Architects in the planning of a new, private university campus outside the City of Dubai. Currently open desert, the campus will be a tight cluster of buildings organized on the ancient principals of the Medina, with sequences of shaded public social spaces and courts. The entire site will first be planted in date palms to stabilize the land and to create a domesticated context within which the campus can grow over the next several decades. With each phase of growth, trees will be removed and utilized within the new construction or marketed to other nearby developments. Remaining trees will be agriculturally managed in date production. The compact building and open space typologies draw inspiration from traditional urban planning principles of the Arabian Peninsula and constitute a large part of a greater initiative to design an ecologically sustainable campus.