Manama: Northwestern University in Qatar, a media, communication and journalism school, has celebrated the groundbreaking for its long anticipated new building in Doha's Education City.
The new facility, designed by American architect Antoine Predock, will house a growing programme with an emphasis on digital and global operations for communication, journalism and liberal arts programmes and will have multimedia studios, lecture halls, a theatre, radio station, newsroom, library and exhibition space as well as the latest media technologies.
The new 32,520sq m building "will be among the most modern and well equipped in the world," Everette E. Dennis, dean and CEO of NU-Q, said. Plans for the structure have been four years in the making.
Focusing on the instruction and research that will take place in the building, Provost Daniel Linzer said that "here students will enter a world of classrooms, studios, control rooms and theaters all a platform for learning as they connect settled knowledge with new discoveries and learn to mold their skills into professional practice that will adapt to change."
An exhibition space will serve as a hub for understanding the past, present and future of communication and media.
"This museum space will introduce scholars and enthusiasts of world and Middle Eastern media to artifacts from the past as well as changing exhibits that capture the essence of current debates over media and their role," the dean said.
