Within the activities of Expo 2020 Dubai, ‎with the participation of 62 students and ‎alumni from the College of Engineering.

The College of Engineering, United Arab ‎Emirates University, organized a workshop ‎entitled A New School of Thought for ‎Creative Architectural Design Studio hosted ‎by the Australian Pavilion at Expo 2020 ‎Dubai. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr ‎Ahmed Agiel, Department of Architecture, 62 ‎students and alumni from the College of ‎Engineering participated in this event. The ‎workshop focused on architectural education ‎and developing intellectual, creative methods ‎for teaching and learning architectural design ‎by adopting new strategies based on theories ‎and analytical components in psychology.‎

Presenting the results of his study related to ‎understanding the link between Al Ain ‎community and their heritage architecture, ‎Dr. Ahmed Agiel pointed out that Al Ain ‎community has a close attachment and ‎connection to the local architectural style and ‎he said: This close attachment has become a ‎psychological need for the communities. We, ‎as a competent authority, must provide the ‎communities with future engineers, taking ‎into account this psychological need when ‎qualifying students to design future buildings, ‎and enabling students to identify and explore ‎this psychological need for the community. ‎This new approach was implemented in a ‎classroom experimentally with the ‎participation of 27 students in the ‎Department of Architecture under the name ‎of (Brand Design Strategy Studio). The ‎experiment was highly successful based on ‎the assessments of the participants in the ‎workshop.‎

He added, "This difficult task to qualify ‎architects, who can meet the psychological ‎needs of societies while allowing the architect-‎designer to be unique in his/her architectural ‎style is one of his most important current ‎concerns. The focus on this gap of knowledge ‎extends during four years under his ‎supervision of a PhD student. Subsequently, ‎he confirmed that the initial results of the ‎research attracted significant interest from ‎British psychologists and their desire to track ‎the future of this study. "‎

The workshop included an open dialogue with ‎the audience, consisting of 62 students and ‎alumni from the Department of Architecture ‎the College of Engineering at the UAEU, ‎about their vision and proposals in developing ‎architectural design studios and the method ‎of teaching, analyzing and discovering them. ‎An advanced methodology (Staying ‎F.O.C.U.S.E.D) was used which is suitable for ‎solving complex problems with great depth, ‎definition and accuracy. The attendees ‎presented a set of important proposals, such ‎as that design studios contain more ‎awareness and education about architectural ‎history, and adopt psychological methods ‎and tools for analyzing and evaluating ‎building design processes in terms of ‎architectural form. In addition, they called for ‎participation in local and international ‎architectural competitions with students of ‎other universities to expand their knowledge ‎by considering the architectural identity of ‎their cities.‎