Introducing refurbishment in the UAE for the sustainable upgrade of the school sector

As part of its 2021 Vision, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is planning to enhance its school sector with the aim of reforming the educational system, but also of improving its buildings quality and energy performance. To achieve this goal, the UAE Government announced, in October 2016, the need for new public-school facilities, and launched an open competition for the design of a prototype that is estimated to replace half of the existing “outdated” school buildings. However, the governmental plan of emptying half of the existing schools will cause a tremendous loss in resources (such as land and embodied energy of the existing buildings), and heritage connected to the development of the local education system. For this reason, while endorsing the need for novel educational facilities, this study proposes an alternative of refurbishing and upgrading the existing school buildings. While countries with older history and policies have successfully applied refurbishing processes on large scale sectors of their cities, the UAE is still approaching urban development by means of new construction. The objective of this study is to show the advantages of refurbishment actions in terms of heritage preservation, energy efficiency, and financial savings toward a sustainable development of the UAE society and urban environment. The study presents the benefits achievable by refurbishing an existing school building, in comparison to the construction of a new one (a sample building was chosen from Khor Fakkan, Sharjah). Focus is put in conjugation between architectural typology requirements (learning spaces), energy efficiency, and construction- and operation-related costs. A wide range of stakeholders were considered in this study, which included professionals from the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Ministry of Education, students, teachers, and school administrators.