UOB Campus Extension

The site seeks to invigorate the learning environment by creating vibrant spaces that enhance student life, academic collaboration, and community engagement.

The University of Balamand (UOB) organized an invited competition for the extension of its Beirut campus. The project presented an opportunity to not only create an extension, but to breathe new life into the existing campus by maximizing open space and emphasizing its connection with the surrounding context.

The university’s space needs are split between two five-story “blocks,” the north and south, with a large, stepped 49m/160ft wide piazza in-between that seamlessly connects to the street and existing campus’s atrium.

Creating a vertical campus, the north-south facing blocks with narrow east-west façades are designed to house an open piazza, facing cafeteria and admin spaces on the ground-level, with four stories of offices, classrooms, labs, auditorium, and multipurpose spaces to support the university’s needs. Below both blocks and the piazza, is a five-story underground parking garage that provides an additional 7,650 SQM. (82,344 SF.) of space to serve the university and surrounding neighborhood.

The blocks’ reinforced concrete frames, chosen for stability, strength, and its suitability for basements and multi-story buildings, are composed of a solid volume, an open buffer, and circulation. Several diagonal cantilevered skybridges connect the two blocks, activating and animating the piazza from above. The design integrates passive systems, including a façade as sun breaker, solar panels, carbon monoxide detection, louvers for cross-ventilation, and sound buffers.