Al Qasimiyah School

Al Qasimiyah School is located in Al-Manakh neighbourhood, in a central area of Sharjah, with directly adjacent to it, two other educational buildings: Khalid Bin Muhammed Primary School for Girls and a kindergarten following the Tukan and Rais Kindergarten prototype, the three forming an educational cluster in the neigborhoud. The school is a two-storey building that groups twenty four classrooms, twelve on each floor as well as five labs, a large library and a double-height theater. Accessible via, covered walkways, the educational spaces are organized around a series of visually inter-related courtyards of different sizes: a large covered central courtyard, a long and narrow courtyard adjacent to it, and four smaller courtyards flanking them.
Currently Al Qasimiyah school serves as Sharjah Architecture Triennial headquarters. SAT envisioned to transform it into an open venue that facilitates conversations and public exchanges and supports the creation and dissemination of local and regional knowledge around an expanded view of Architecture. The purpose of this project is connected to the educational beginnings of the building. The institution position is that adaptive reuse presents a viable alternative to the wasteful process of demolition and reconstruction, hence its attractiveness. In addition to the environmental benefits, the social advantage of repurposing a place with valued heritage, makes adaptive reuse an essential component of sustainable development. The renovation entailed adapting the building to its new program, with very limited changes not compromising its architecture integrity. The twenty- four classrooms each defined by three precast concrete flat vaults were transformed into exhibition and workshop spaces, as well as offices, yet two contiguous classrooms that formed a wing were merged to form a larger space covered six precast concrete flat vaults (112m2) as a more suitable size for exhibition and workshop spaces. For the same purpose the relatively closed classroom facades lining the walkways were slightly opened up by replacing the two solid doors of the closed façade of each wing by glazed doors and replacing the operable windows directly adjacent to the doors by glazed doors of the same proportion of the existing ones.

Al Qasimiyah School represents a proud period of national investment in education and civic projects across the United Arab Emirates. The school was built in 1981 after being commissioned by the UAE Ministry of Education as a primary school for boys; it follows a building typology that can be seen in numerous, almost identical schools across the country more than twenty of which are in Sharjah alone. This ubiquitous typology became synonymous with educational facilities and is based on a mid-1970s prototype by the regional architectural firm Khatib & Alami.

Through the scheme’s spatial strategies, and its architectural elements, the building demonstrates a sensitive response to both the climate of the UAE and the well-being of its students and teachers. The modular classrooms are organized around six visually interconnected multi-scale courtyards offering a pleasant porous environment with natural ventilation. The surrounding shaded circulation spaces oriented to the south and the two double volume open-air loggias add to the feeling of comfort. The passive ventilation is equally felt in the interior spaces as the openings on two opposite facades create cross-ventilation in the classrooms which are also filled with northern daylight throughout the day.

In Sharjah, the walking neighborhoods dating back to the 70s and 80s were each allotted with one school for boys, and one school for girls following Khatib Al Alami school typology, in addition to one kindergarten and a park reflecting the thoughtfulness of the urbanism of this period. Buildings such as Al Qasimiyah School were inscribed in the daily life of the neighborhood and its inhabitants. They continue to have a place in the collective cultural memory and place identity of Sharjans, as Sharjah Architecture Triennial team witnesses when individuals that have attended such schools visit the building. Being discontinued as schools by the Ministry of education, schools following Al Khatib Al Alami prototype are very promising venues to host new forms of cultural and educational institutions such as the Sharjah Architecture Triennial.