Irbid Innovation Hub: A promenade through a curious mind.

Design – brief:

Irbid Innovative Learning Hub is a new perspective on educational built environments, it’s a positive environment that stimulates innovation, a center for the community to meet, research, gain knowledge and skills to enjoy the experience of learning in an effort to help engage them in labor market by learning critical thinking and problem solving skills.

The need for this project arose owing to the crisis of the high unemployment rates among university degree holders in Jordan, the stagnation state in many disciplines, especially in Engineering fields, which indicates a defect in the learning system.

The project is located in Irbid, Jordan; that has the second largest population in Jordan after Amman, the city is known for its active educational institutes, contains about 10 universities and community colleges.

The location is close to the most vital area in Irbid; the Yarmouk university district, it’s where most educational services are, as well most of the target groups are (college student, fresh graduates…).

The context around the project site has been a symbol of “education & culture” in the eyes of the local people. Despite this, most educational institutes in the context are enclosed to society and do not interact with it.

So, the issue is how to create a vibrant and coherent learning environment for the community in a neighborhood surrounded by blocks enclosed by fences?

By giving Visibility & Accessibility, this indicates a social message that the center is open to all community members to get involved.

Psychology of Creativity and Innovation

Definition: It is natural, everybody has creativity when they are not blocked in any way. Which is directly linked with the ability to act like a child. (David Kelley- psychologist).

Creativity and innovation are complicated mental processes that varies from one person to another, Innovation doesn’t always follow a linear singular, systematic approach. it might have a frequent shift, back and forth between stages.

the program of the project holds spaces that embrace events of the creativity process, to ensure the best functionality, the building must support the regular shifts between phases by creating seamless connections, the circulation allows an experience of the entire program to the visitor to discover, not only to serve transitions but to think, observe and allow unplanned meetings.

Architecture Role

Although what kills creativity are factors related to the social structure, the role of architecture remains limited in solving the problem, but by using design tools that stimulates certain desirable feelings; architecture can have an influential role in the long run as it can inspire society and change its thought slowly but effectively.

As seeing a mysterious staircase structure floating in the air towards the sky is unusual, it seems like a surreal scene that breaks what restricts our vision, as it is the first thing that draws the attention of visitors to push them to enter into a series of non-linear events of the creativity process, as a journey inside the human mind, by a promenade that move us to different stations of the creativity process, seeing the final product of innovation (gallery) while sighting the process (spaces) that led to these products (visual connection between spaces).

The concept can be summed up to: architecture works as a catalyst for social structure, where they play the most significant role in developing the education process, so architecture seeks to stimulate creativity & mind liberation for individuals and community.