The new GUtech Halban Campus is located beside the Muscat Express Highway. It will cover a net area of 25,000 square metre. The main campus building will feature a total of 527 rooms, including several large lecture halls, physics and chemistry laboratories, IT laboratories, canteen, library, prayer-rooms, grocery-shop, and sports facilities for volleyball, basketball and football.
The first realisation phase of the new campus includes the main building with all academic and administration facilities, three accommodation buildings for students and staff and the technical site infrastructure with roads, walkways, electricity, water supply facilities and a sewage treatment plant from which the treated water will be used for irrigation of landscaped areas.
As part of the sustainable design elements in the masterplan, the main campus building has been constructed according to the wind direction. It will have a total of six floors in the front and four floors in the back. The main building will have many open spaces with recreation and green areas to create a cooler micro-climate.
The campus will also feature a number of unique green features: The amphitheatre is an open area covered with a tent structure and will be cooled by recycled air from the building. The main idea is also to have an open campus. The amphitheatre with fountains will be the heart of the building, which will be able to accommodate up to 1,000 people.
The building will also feature four different wings of German and Omani cities. There will be a Muscat wing in the North, the Salalah wing in the South, the Berlin wing in the East, and the Aachen wing in the West of the main building.
There will be no main entrance doors, so that the building is open to the general public. The campus will be the first building with sound isolation system for footsteps, which is important for lecture rooms. Furthermore, to reduce the air-conditioning cooling, all windows are highly insulated and sealed, with the whole building thermally insulated.
The landscape outside the main campus building and in between the accommodation units, called green axis, will include a falaj system. Each accommodation building will have green inner courtyards, which may include sports field in the future. The landscaping has used the wadi theme, for which local plants like date palm trees or acacia will be planted. To reduce the car traffic on campus and to follow the model of a university campus in Germany, there will be a central parking located at the entrance of the campus. The main building will be able to accommodate up to a total of 1,800 students and staff members. The main campus and the accommodation buildings will be accessible by walkways or cycling paths.
The construction on site started in March 2011 with the foundation and will be completed in time within 18 months. Besides the main building, three accommodation buildings will be opened by the end of September 2012.
