Visual Art School: Where a Single Square Becomes a Complete Campus

Take a square, repeat it, stack it, stagger it, and connect the pieces with elevated walkways. That is the entire formal vocabulary of this Visual Art School, and it turns out to be more than enough. By constraining herself to a single geometric module, designer Amna Alblooki builds a campus that is simultaneously disciplined and generous: every studio, gallery, and common room occupies its own clearly defined box, yet the spaces breathe through transparency, light, and open-air circulation between volumes.

The project was shortlisted in the Bauhaus Neue competition, which challenged designers to rethink educational architecture in the spirit of the original Bauhaus school. Alblooki situates her proposal within the campus of Zayed University, placing the two-storey structures between the male and female campus zones. The jury recognized the clarity of the scheme but pushed for even wilder ambition. Juror Martin Schmidt Radic of Schmidt Arquitectos Asociados remarked: "Even in the real world we are planning better projects, you are not dealing with the reality, let's fly, imagine something different than what exists!" That tension between rigorous order and imaginative freedom is exactly what makes the project worth studying.

Two Staggered Volumes, Connected in Mid-Air

The school consists of two buildings, each two floors tall, arranged in a staggered open configuration so that outdoor space flows between and around them. Section drawings reveal generous floor-to-ceiling heights in the studios, with large window openings pulling daylight deep into the work areas. Elevated pathways bridge the two volumes, creating a circuit of movement that keeps the ground plane open and free. The physical study models and early plan sketches show how Alblooki tested dozens of grid arrangements before landing on this configuration, which balances proximity between programme zones with clear spatial separation.

Functional zoning is vertical. The ground level houses gallery space and social interaction areas, turning the publicly accessible floor into a showcase for student work. The upper floor is reserved for practical workspaces: drawing studio, painting studio, and sculpture class. This split means visitors can engage with the school's output without interrupting the creative process upstairs.

Exploded Modules and the Logic of Assembly

The axonometric view makes the modular logic immediately legible. Flat-roofed square volumes sit on a shared datum, connected by exterior stairs and ramps that double as casual gathering spots bathed in sunlight. The exploded axonometric goes further, peeling apart the material palette layer by layer: structure, railings, interior partitions, and figures that indicate scale and use. What emerges is a construction system that could, in principle, be prefabricated and assembled on site, then reconfigured or expanded as the school's needs evolve. Modularity here is not just a formal conceit; it hints at a genuinely adaptable building strategy.

Private Desks, Terrazzo Floors, and Blue Curtains

One of the most distinctive commitments of the project is its insistence on individual student workspaces. Rather than large shared tables, each artist-in-training receives a dedicated desk, a rare consideration in art education buildings that prioritizes focused creativity over communal sprawl. The interior perspectives confirm this intention: terrazzo flooring provides a durable, easy-to-clean ground surface suited to messy studio work, while timber furniture adds warmth. Blue curtains filter and soften the light at each window, allowing students to control glare without closing off the view entirely.

Alblooki even extends her design attention to the furniture itself. Detailed elevation, axonometric, and plan drawings present a custom seating unit integrated with storage shelves. It is a small detail, but it reinforces the project's core thesis: every element, from campus plan to chair, derives from the same modular discipline and the same concern for the individual learner.

Why This Project Matters

The jury's provocation to "fly" and "imagine something different" is fair, and it points to a real question about whether formal restraint can coexist with creative risk. But the strength of Alblooki's scheme is precisely its restraint. By committing fully to the square module, she demonstrates how far a single decision can carry an entire design: from site plan to section to furniture. That kind of rigor is itself a Bauhaus inheritance, one that values systematic thinking over arbitrary gesture.

More importantly, the project takes the programme seriously. Art schools too often treat studios as generic open floors, leaving students to carve out territory informally. Alblooki's decision to give each student a private workspace, housed within a clearly zoned and daylit module, suggests a pedagogy that values sustained individual practice alongside collective exchange. For a school that teaches visual art, that spatial commitment to the individual maker is a statement worth defending.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Amna Alblooki's

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Project credits: Visual Art School by Amna Alblooki's Bauhaus Neue (uni.xyz).