Design Guidelines and Standards for Iraqi Schools - The Future Prospects

Abstract

Educational facilities are among the critical functional types because of their role in preparing future generations to advance the wheel of progress. If these facilities are not qualified to perform their functions, then the educational process is negatively affected. Schools in Iraq suffer from many problems due to the inadequacy of educational facilities to meet the student’s needs as a result of the absence of comprehensive standards and guidelines for school designs. According to that, this paper aims to identify the deficiencies in the Iraqi standards of public schools. The paper relied in its methodology on a comprehensive comparison between Iraqi standards and a number of international standards and guidance of schools, then the analyses and assessment of some design criteria in a sample of Iraqi schools to show their compatibility with both Iraqi and international standards. The results of comparative analyses between global and local standards and guidelines revealed the limitation and shortcomings in the Iraqi standards. The paper found a wide range of design specifications the Iraqi school standards lack such as the norms of sustainability, safety, flexibility, comfort parameters, special needs, etc. The investigation of existing Iraqi public schools revealed their incompatibility with both Iraqi and international standards. The contribution of this paper is to provide a future vision to develop Iraqi school designs to meet the common requirements of international standards and guidelines for school designs during the conceptual design and building life cycle.