Wrong Direction
Mishal Adel AlMusaileekh
(Kuwait University, 24 September 2012)
Kuwait in the past had a good direction for urban planning. This is not the case today because of the serious traffic problem. People are finding it hard to reach their destinations nowadays in Kuwait . One of the urban planning issues is Khaldiya campus of Kuwait university. The intrinsic issues are traffic and full capacity. First, traffic. All the labor power go to the workplace at the same time. Second, full capacity. The architecture department is having a lot of students that is above the department's capacity.
One of the urban issues is Kuwait University, the huge number of students became a reality, and the colleges could not handle this numbers of the students any more. Kuwait University established in 1966 after five years Kuwait's independence from British Colonization. One of the colleges of the Kuwait University is college of engineering and petroleum campus inside khaldiyah district and one of the colleges inside Khaldiyah campus is the college of architecture.
5kh is considered important for the students. It is a daily challenge for them to reach it because of traffic . The first thing that the students always meant to do to reach 5kh is parking in Adailiah area after parking in the middle of the streets and in front of the others residents, that really happen nowadays in life and there were a followers of the architectural students in the parking issue also there are a police cars that contravention the students and that is immoral behavior from the police . However , I park my car and then I cross the bridge with others students and passerby's. Students walk through the bridge under the hot sun rays in the summer, and in the winter it is very interesting thing to walk through it. I think that they must cover the bridge for the students. The students Walk over the cars through the bridge until they reach the seventh gate of the campus, entering the gate walking to the valley of the 5KH.
The historical background about 5kh, it was belong to the civil and petroleum engineering programme before 1997. The college of engineering started to think about architectural programme to keep pace with the others architectural colleges in the western universities. After deep studies from the engineering college, they opened the college of architecture in 1997 to keep up to date with other departments in the world. The remaining things from these colleges are in the ground floor there are labs for petroleum engineering and cad labs for civil engineering. In the second floor there is one lab that belonged to the engineering’s programmes, that what is remaining for the engineering programmes. The building now belongs to architectural programmes faculties and students.
The college goal to graduate professional architectural students. The architect aim is knowing how to develop a city, creating buildings, knowing theories and histories through practicing 9 design studios.When the students and faculties also reach 5kh the first thing that will face them the big domestic tunnel tree arch and L shape building as usual of the campus buildings. In each corner of the building there is a stair case one for the faculty and the other one is abandoned from it is realty from the outside the department and inside.
Entering the building of 5kh from the main door there is a security check point for Amn WA Salama and there is stair case in the middle connect the ground floor with other floors. There are two flanks for the building, the north flank and the west flank .In each floor there is experimental labs and faculty offices, lecture rooms and design studios and one prayer room for the faculties and students. 5kh have the largest quantity of the drawings tables maybe in the worlds. Materials and structure construction methods of the building is reinforced-concrete for the structure and glass for the glazing system. For the doors they are made from wood some of them and aluminum for the others. The building color from the outside is matt brown nowadays.
