JOHOR BAHRU, August 10 – Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) will receive a new Faculty of Science building at its Johor Bahru campus.
Head of Construction Division, Office of Asset and Development, Abdul Fattah Abu Bakar said that the Faculty of Science building is sited on 10.47 acres of land, which is part of the UTM new cluster.
“The faculty is situated within the UTM new cluster development area, together with other new buildings including the Research Management Center (RMC), the Faculty of Bioscience and Medical Engineering (FBME) and the Zarith Sofiah Library.
“All the new buildings within this cluster will be linked to a common central courtyard known as ‘Dataran Ilmu’ as a focal point where students meet and interact,” he said.
The faculty building encompasses six floors which accommodate lecture rooms, laboratories for each department, administration rooms, lecturers’ rooms, students’ common amenities, cafeteria and library.
“All these rooms have been designed to be linked around the central open courtyard which dominates the internal circulation between the spaces that will cater to approximately 968 undergraduate and 657 post-graduate students in this 128, 058 square feet of gross floor area,” he said.
Abdul Fattah added that this new faculty building has also been built with special north and south elevation features, which aim to utilize maximum daylight to the interior throughout the day.
“In this space, artificial lighting will be reduced and daylight will be used optimally. The east and west sun exposure will be controlled using an array of external perforated panels which sit along the perimeter of the extended curvilinear beams to filter the excessive solar heat and unwanted glare,” he said.
Besides reducing electricity consumption, the new faculty building also takes advantage of cross ventilation.
“Sun, wind and light are carefully manipulated by the design to provide optimum public space environment which in return would enhance productivity,” he said.
This building is the last to be built under the 9th Malaysia Plan (Rancangan Malaysia ke-9) or RMK-9 where UTM received RM1.02 Billion for 26 projects on the Johor Bahru and Kuala Lumpur campuses.