AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF SHARJAH SCHOOL – Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
The challenge for an American design firm working on an overseas project is the creation of a scheme that is respectfully accurate to the cultural norms of the host country while not pretending to be anything but a Western design firm. The AUSS campus is a Western interpretation of Middle Eastern culture. Here, our office adopted the approach of using devices familiar in the Middle Eastern landscape to fulfill site engineering, programming, and circulation needs. The exterior spaces consist of a formal entry garden; a play area; a series of interior, open-air courtyards; a street dedicated for the teaching of horticulture; a street that acts as both a park and a drainage device; and a campus center. The focus of my energies was the two streetscapes.
Office: RGR Landscape
Status: Schematic Design
Main Entrance Design: Tanya Barth
Main Entry Courtyard Design: Tanya Barth
Edible Garden Street Design: John Merritt
Main Street Design: John Merritt
Elementary School Courtyards Design: Carrie Eastman
Horticulture Street
This street features a garden for growing edible and ornamental plants that serves as an educational tool for teaching horticulture. It comprises an exposed sequence of components running the length of the street along which students can observe the principles of irrigation: a cistern (shadirvan), a chevroned slope (salsabil) down which water flows into a series of open channels and pools, and raised gardens modeled after SIPS or sub-irrigated planters whereby water is taken up by plant roots via capillary action.
An open-channel irrigation system. Patio de Naranjos. Córdoba, Spain.
Irrigation schematic.
Longitudinal Section.
Plan. (The plan orientation is the reverse of the section orientation. )
Cross Section.
Main Street
The wadi, or what would be known as an arroyo in the West, is the central feature in the design of the main pedestrian street. My intent not only was to reference the greater landscape as a means of incorporating the spirit of this region, but to introduce a “useful allegory” into our overall scheme. When dry, this channel is a linear, sunken garden, a place of repose apart from the pedestrian circulation running parallel. During the average ten days per year this region would experience rain, the wadi acts as a spillway to help capture any torrents of run-off flowing across the hard pan of this arid landscape.
An example of a wadi. Naha lashan. Beersheba, Israel.
Illustrative plan.
Cross section.