EDUCATION
SUSTAINABLE FLOORING CHOICE FOR NEW SECONDARY SCHOOL Designed as an educational facility for secondary grade students, The Arcadia Secondary School is a new purpose-built school adjacent to The Arcadia Preparatory School. Echoing the school’s bright, safe and sustainable design, Milliken’s Culture Canvas carpet tiles were chosen for the Arcadia school library.
building, designed to T heaccommodate up to 800 students, has the majority of ground-floor classrooms extending out onto open protected spaces to the rear, providing children with safe access to play areas from their classrooms.
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The campus covers a total teaching space of 6000m2, including the classrooms, shared learning and labs. Other facilities within the campus include a library, music and dance rooms that together cover an area of 1500m2.
Internally, classrooms are bright with ample daylight and with large corridors providing social spaces for children. Recreational play areas include a soccer pitch and sports courts, multipurpose hall and swimming pool, which
are provided on different levels of the building. The school is designed in line with sustainable building practices to provide an optimally safe, healthy, comfortable and productive learning environment for students and a pleasant working environment for faculty and staff. Arcadia School is the second in a series of community-based schools delivering the vision of Mohan Valrani and the Al Shirawi Group. The Arcadia School’s secondary campus is the second school designed and built by Godwin Austen Johnson (GAJ) Architects as part of a series of community-based schools for Arcadia Education. Located within Dubai’s Jumeirah Village Triangle, close to the primary school, the orientation of the new secondary campus and the functions within it have been optimised to exploit the view out over the central Jumeirah Village Triangle Park. 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 12m-high indoor climbing wall feature. The new secondary school features a full-sized artificial pitch, a 25m swimming pool and MUGA court, which can be accessed by the primary school when required.
