Kettle Collective recently visited the completed Al Mouj Community Hub in Muscat.
The Community Hub Building announces itself onto the main boulevard of Al Mouj, Muscat with a distinctive façade treatment and full glazed frontage at the main intersection with Street 6. The long elevation of the Hub runs parallel with that street and completes the fourth corner of the main intersection between Street 6 and the Boulevard. The Hub is set back slightly from the street footway allowing the elevated plaza level to extend towards the main intersection also forming a “green” landscape edge between building and street. This green edge continues to follow the street and engages a ramp and steps up to the plaza level for access to the entrance to the Masjid, the Community Hub Exhibition space and then on to the heart of the landscaped podium plaza.
The plaza is formed by an ‘archipelago’ of islands, each island containing planting or grass areas, with seating throughout. The largest ‘island’ forms the heart of the space, with playful grass landforms and children’s hammocks surrounded by the fluid forms of the planted shade canopy.
