Godwin Austen Johnson (GAJ) has completed The Arcadia School’s Secondary Campus. This is the second school designed and built by the firm as part of a series of community-based schools for Arcadia Education. The award-winning Arcadia School’s primary campus, designed and built by GAJ, was handed over in 2016, Located within Dubai’s Jumeirah Village Triangle close to the primary school the orientation of the new secondary campus and functions within it have been optimised to exploit the view out over the central Jumeirah Village Triangle Park. It covers a total teaching space of 6000sqm including the classrooms, shared learning and labs. The ancillary facilities which includes the library, music and dance rooms cover an area of 1500sqm.
As a facility for secondary school age students the scale of The Arcadia School’s secondary campus is much larger than The Arcadia School’s primary campus and provides a more flexible and interactive learning environment. “We have been designing and building schools for many years and we understand and value the opportunity to create unique buildings for school operators. Each one we deliver is tailored to the specific requirements and brand identity of the school,” said Jason Burnside, partner at Godwin Austen Johnson. “With this new school we wanted to ensure brand consistency and a design approach to support the ethos and visual identity of Arcadia.”
Drawing inspiration from The Arcadia School’s primary campus the reception is bright and airy opening out into a large casual seating zone with a unique 12 metre high indoor climbing wall feature. The inclusion of the wall is to reinforce the school’s ethos of transparency and its desire to ensure students play a highly visible and interactive role in their education. The new secondary school also features a full sized artificial pitch, a 25m swimming pool and MUGA court which can be accessed by the primary school when required. This sharing of facilities also helps with the transition from primary to secondary education building confidence for the students about to move to the next stage of their education. Arcadia School is the second in a series of community-based schools delivering the vision of Mohan Valrani and the Al Shirawi Group.
