The Institute of Architecture and Islamic Arts - to be named the Department of Architectural Engineering- was established at Al al-bayt University in 1994 to serve the universities’ core principles. It is aimed to enhance the sense of belonging to the Islamic civilization and its values, and get familiar with its heritage and accomplishments. This was all part of the university’s vision of dedicating efforts towards the development of different sciences among Muslims, and reuniting sciences with their Islamic origins.
In 2002 the Department offered the Bachelor program in Architectural Engineering with approximately 70 Jordanian students. This was part of the university’s effort to fulfill community’s aspirations and needs as well as to provide the opportunity for students, specially from Mafraq city and its surroundings, to study architecture without having to travel to universities in other cities in Jordan or go abroad.
The main objective of the Department is to prepare well-qualified graduates to meet the needs of the country and the region, equipped with a deeply rooted theoretical base of architectural principles and philosophy based on the Islamic civilization perspective. A further objective is to graduate students capable of dealing with design problems in the field of architecture as a science connected and integrated with scientific and applied disciplines. Another main objective of the Department is the creation of the suitable domestic and urban environment that fulfills social, psychological, and economical human needs using different environmental friendly and energy efficient techniques.There is a great hope that the Department is going to take considerable part in establishing cultural values and constructing scientific pillars which reflects the Arabic-Islamic values resembled by Jordan and Al al-bayt University.
The Department is working seriously to establish and develop communication channels with other architectural schools in local, regional and international academic institutions, and with engineering corporations in both public and private sectors. It seeks, on one hand, to appoint more faculty members who will support the Department with their academic and research experiences. On the othe hand, the Department provides its facilities with the necessary infrastructure - including drawing tables, studios, and classrooms supplied with different developed equipment and scientific tools that cope with the continuous progress in the different architectural fields specially the use of computers in architectural drawing and presentation. It also intends to open a specialized library rich in architectural books and references.
