Designed for Excellence

Lighting was supplied by iGuzzini and Erco.
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The design of DIFC’s executive educational facility had to take technical, as well as aesthetic, considerations into account.

The 45,000ft² DIFC Centre of Excellence is the most challenging project that Dubai-based designlab has ever worked on – and, arguably, the most intricate.

Conceptualised as an international-standard educational institute for executives, the centre has partnered with leading educational facilities from around the globe to provide a range of programmes across a number of disciplines, ranging from law and human resources to Islamic finance.

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Eleven international institutions have joined forces with The Centre of Excellence – which presented a challenge in itself, as the design had to address the varying demands of each.

Designlab initially tendered for the project, alongside ten other companies, in early 2007; the project was then put on hold until the fourth quarter of 2007, when the client, DIFC, asked designlab to submit a new concept.

“We went through four concepts in the end,” explained Mohsin Jawaheri, designlab’s chief operating officer. “And once we were appointed, we were then asked to incorporate the criteria of each institute that was going in.

“All of the different universities that were going to be teaching in the facility had their own requirements. At the end of the day, we had to make it operational for everybody,” he noted.

While the details had to be fine-tuned, there was one clear, overriding message that the design had to convey: that the DIFC Centre of Excellence was high-end, international and exclusive but, at the same time, accessible. “We wanted to make it grand but we didn’t want to scare people off. It is still welcoming.”

Grand schemes
The use of top-end furnishings, lighting and carpeting from leading international suppliers, as well as opulent materials such as marble, contributed in creating this sense of grandeur.

“In the lift lobbies and the lounge on the first floor we put in marble flooring. We chose this particular marble because it matched the DIFC identity. It had gold and silver and grey, which is in keeping with the DIFC colours,” said Jawaheri.

Classrooms and seminar rooms were coated with a thin yet extremely heavy-duty carpet from a leading European supplier. And when it came to lighting, designlab worked with Erco and iGuzzini. “We used Erco in all of the specialised areas – the auditoriums, lecture rooms, seminar rooms and so on. For the common areas and general offices, we worked with iGuzzini.