Sohar University Campus

Sohar University, in the fast-growing industrial port city of Sohar on the Omani Batinah coast, planned to expand to cater to 12,000 students. As part of this project, the university commissioned Verdaus to design the new university campus grounds.

In developing the site layout with architects Design Inc, the design team referenced traditional Middle Eastern principles for site planning. For this reason, it arranged buildings, including existing ones, around the plot perimeter to create a large open space in the centre. Within that space, paths follow an ordered grid, while palms and trees offer shade.
The formal and open central axis is an important part of the university’s identity. Attractive features here are lawns and reflection pools. Around them are primary footpaths, which create the edges of the central corridor. Their formal avenues of palms provide shade, as does a pergola featuring mashrabiya. For their part, secondary footpaths cross at right angles to the central axis.
The library is a contemporary circular building. The plaza surrounding it has faculty buildings on three sides, while the fourth opens out to the central axis. Running out to the edges of this plaza is a grid of small tree groves, which creates a series of shaded seating areas.
The agricultural Batinah coast, as home to the university, is a fertile area that contrasts starkly with the sand and gravel deserts or barren mountains typical of the Arabian Peninsula. With its agricultural fields, palm plantations and orchards, its landscape character suggests abundance.

However, underground freshwater reserves have fallen as people have been using them increasingly for agriculture. As a result, the saltwater table has risen, leading to less fertile land.
The team’s solution was to conserve freshwater by designing an on-site ecological water treatment plant to treat all of the university’s wastewater. The system uses the reed Phragmites australis to remove pollutants from the wastewater. That water, in turn, can irrigate the landscape.

Further advantages of the reed beds are that they create habitat for birds and they are in harmony with the wider landscape identity as they too are agricultural in character.

Sievert Consult undertook environmental engineering of the reed bed wastewater treatment system.
Location
Sohar, Sultanate of Oman
24.2980236, 56.7790262
Plot Size
20 ha (49 acre)
Lead Consultant
Design Inc (Australia)
Environmental Consultant
Sievert Consult
Studio Team
Tarek Al Sheeti, Reynaldo Casin, Meilina Chuah, Rodel Demafelis, Balamurugan Gopal, Thomas Hewitt, Santhosh John, Jeffrey Allen Kurtz, Leo Adrian Namuco, Gerraween Ann Paz, Miguelito Pegi, John Patrick Rice, Andre Paul Saladaga, Ian Sandigan, Pierre Smit, Laith Wark
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Project Owner
Sohar University
Role
Master Planning
Concept Design
 Schematic Design
Detailed Design
Tender Evaluation