The Special Education Support Center
General Description
The Special Education Support Center Sharjah occupies a building that follows the architecture firm “Rais and Tukan” kindergarten prototype dating back to 1973; it was commissioned by the public education system in the United Arab Emirates that had opted for prototype schemes which are particularly efficient to meet the pressing educational needs of the nascent state. It was to address the immense wave of student enrollment following the government’s mandate to facilitate and compel access to education at the rise of the federation.
The circa 3,000 square meter building sits on a larger plot that is surrounded by a weaved concrete block bordering wall. This building is located between Al Qasimiyah school and Khaled Bin Muhammed school in the Al Manakh neighborhood of Sharjah. The building is organized around a courtyard that served as the open-air children playground, and is surrounded by a covered loggia allowing for a shaded circulation between what used to be the administration block situated near the entrance with its reception, waiting, directors’ and teachers’ rooms and the two educational wings located on each side of the courtyard. Each wing has three square classrooms around the large square multipurpose space. Spatially, this prototype is derived from square modular units of six-by-six meters for the classroom and twelve-by-twelve meters for the multipurpose hallway. The weaving of interior and exterior spaces extends to the interior of the wings, as each classroom has its shaded outdoor patio. Classrooms and patio together open to the wing’s common area with its two large square multipurpose halls. As some archival drawings suggest, the large multipurpose halls and the classrooms can adopt a variety of furniture configurations, suggesting a highly fluid and adaptable scheme. The kindergarten is characterized by its distinct pyramidal roofs, 12 smaller ones above the classrooms and 4 larger ones above the multipurpose halls. As the plot is surrounded by the weaved bordering wall, only the distinct reinforced concrete pyramidal roofs are visible from the street.
Presently the building has lost towards the inside and outside some of its spatial quality as the outdoor classrooms adjacent to the indoor classrooms with pyramidal roof have been turned into interior spaces with a false ceiling, hence the classrooms and the larger hallways do not anymore receive daylight as intended in the prototype and as can be seen in other kindergartens following the same prototype_ reference Kalba kindergarten. Also, a couple of classrooms with pyramidal roofs have been covered with false ceilings. The building exterior was also painted beige, certainly not the original color. Also, most of the original flooring was changed, and canopies were added to cover the two courtyards. Nevertheless, it seems that the various users are still enjoying the building and that all these changes are, we believe, reversible.
Criteria
01
Embodies the distinctive aesthetic, physical, or architectural attributes characteristic of the political, social, and economic trends of a particular period.
02
Demonstrates a sustained environmental performance quantified in terms of material use, resource consumption and environmental impacts over the whole life cycle.
03
Contributes to the community’s sense of identity and enrichment of the UAE’s diversity, or is recognized as a place of collective memory for the UAE.
Statement of Significance
The history of the architecture firm “Rais and Tukan” commission reflects a time when education had assumed a high national priority in the United Arab Emirates, compulsory for all children over the age of six. Kindergarten education was offered over two levels for children between the ages of four and six in a co-educational setting. Education was viewed as the driver that would stimulate nationals to drive the future of the Emirates. Access to public education was free and facilitated with the provision of transportation, stationery, uniforms, a daily meal, and a stipend for national students based on the educational level.
The regionally acclaimed George Rais and Jafar Tukan belong to a group of regional and international architects who were active in the United Arab Emirates in the 1970s and early 1980s and who designed and produced culturally and environmentally considerate modern buildings that respond to the new requests and programmatic needs of the emerging state. They succeeded in creating a new architectural identity by reinterpreting and readapting historical architectural typologies and traditional elements while remaining aware of the international architectural conversations of their epoch.
Rais and Tukan’s kindergarten prototype addresses vernacular architecture reinterpretation and responds to its humanist cluster arrangement and scale. The introverted courtyard scheme is based on the concept of a rationalized one-storey cluster typology that organizes designated learning spaces with centralized common areas of convergence. The courtyard serves as the open-air children's playground, and is surrounded by a covered loggia allowing for a shaded circulation between the administration block situated near the entrance with its reception, waiting, directors’ and teachers’ rooms, and the two educational wings located on each side of the courtyard. The wing entrances are more directly connected by a covered passage that crosses the courtyard and extends into the interiors to delineate the two open clusters that form each wing. The experience of the building entails an interaction with the sensitive scale and the fluid sequence of masterfully orchestrated open and closed spaces that accompanied the daily school rituals of children: large open-air courtyards to play, covered galleries to connect, large indoor common spaces to meet, small classrooms to study, and intimate patios to take short breaks. The building creates a balanced flow between indoor and outdoor spaces, playtime and education time.