District–Learning: An Architectural Approach to Bridge the Academic Gap in the UAE Educational System

Abstract

The United Arab Emirates Vision 2071 expects the country to become one of the best in the world in several sectors, including education and infrastructure. Highlighting today’s global tendency towards a knowledge-based economy, it drives the need to bridge the academic gap in UAE’s educational system to enhance the nation’s innovation. This gap is best addressed from three different levels, policy level, pedagogical level, and socio-urban level. The UAE is working on developing its educational system by emphasizing its importance through the UAE future strategies and policies, that will upgrade it with its new pedagogical facilities. This study proposes the “District-Learning”, a novel approach to upgrading the UAE educational system/sector by providing the necessary new pedagogical functions in a building located in the barycenter of a school district and serving all its existing facilities. The concept focuses on boosting the communication between schools in the same district and enables sharing resources between them. This non-physical connectivity will be translated into physical connectivity which bridge each existing school to the new building. The construction process fosters modularity and flexibility, allowing the project to fit the demand of different districts. The study present the results of a test of this new approach to the case study of Al Jurf 2 zone in Ajman.