The site itself needed improving from a geotechnical point of view. So while work on the master plan was being completed, 42,000 stone columns were being drilled into the ground to stabilize the soil and bring it to a condition that could support the weight of the buildings, the designs for which had only just begun at that point. Engineers arrayed 30-inch-diameter holes on a 5-foot-on-center grid that covered the horseshoe-shaped campus. Crushed limestone was injected under high pressure, typically 25 feet deep, into the openings. "It's a unique upgrading process that has been used elsewhere, but never at this magnitude or speed," says Ed Abboud, a structural engineer in HOK's Houston office, which shared the primary design role with HOK's founding office in St. Louis.

A sea court fronts the white stone-glass-clad library, which appears opaque during the day, but glows at night. Photo: © JB Picoulet

 

With site preparations under way, and after several weeks of separate groups working somewhat independently, HOK gathered design leaders for a three-week-long focused design effort. During this period, the firm established design principles and a strategy for carrying them out. "We created a structure that stratified work not by building or typology but by ground plane, middle plane, and roof plane," explains Jeff Ryan, AIA. "Ten percent of the design would be of special structures that have a strong character and give identity to the campus. The rest would be elegant background - quiet, but extremely well-crafted buildings."

The buildings also needed to be extremely flexible since the university's program was being worked out concurrently with the design. This, and the project's condensed time frame, led to buildings with a largely modular design with many repetitive features. Paris-based Oger International, whose work in Saudi Arabia until this point consisted mainly of constructing opulent palaces, came on board as the contractor. Members of its team, which included architects and engineers, relocated to HOK's St. Louis office for six months at a time during design development.

Just as HOK proposed certifying the project through LEED to senior staff at Aramco - the state-owned oil company commissioned by the king to act as the project manager because of its experience doing large, complex projects - the client revealed that the graduate-level university would focus its research on postpetroleum sciences, including sustainable agriculture, next-generation photovoltaics, and other urgent challenges related to energy and the environment.

The multistory lab buildings - rendered taller by the 10-foot-high interstitial spaces between lab floors that allow a variety of layouts to be serviced mechanically over time - are the most prominent on the campus, containing a total of 48 research neighborhoods fitted out to meet the needs of individual professors as they are hired. Flanking the campus's core, the clustered buildings' latticelike terra-cotta cladding alludes to the mashrabiya screen, one of several traditional Arabic elements incorporated into both the campus and building design for aesthetic and environmental reasons.