Big Picture: How Delhi’s Academic Skyline is Changing Forever
At a special event held at the British High Commissioner to India Lindy Cameron’s Residence in September last year, the University of Southampton officially announced its intentions to become the first international university to establish a comprehensive campus in India.
Similarly, the University of Melbourne opened its Melbourne Global Centre in Delhi to facilitate collaboration across education, research, and industry.
These key developments signal an upcoming shift in Delhi’s landscape, where international players will reshape Delhi’s architectural framework by adding iconic buildings that may become synonymous with the city.
“Delhi is no more what it used to be just a few decades ago,” explained AK Jain, former Commissioner (Planning) at Delhi Development Authority (DDA).
“Today, more than two crore people live in Delhi, which means that there is more demand for educational spaces than ever before,” he added, before emphasising that the built-up area in traditional campuses is very less and quite a few campuses in the national capital have under-utilised their land at a time when it is a scarce resource.
Even before we realised, the architecture of the city’s notable institutions is undergoing rapid transformations. Delhi University (DU), for example, is in the midst of an ambitious infrastructure overhaul aimed at modernising its campuses and facilities.
To fund this transformation, the university had sought loans from the Higher Education Financing Agency, amounting to at least Rs 930 crore, for various developmental projects, including building its East Delhi Campus.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in July 2023, laid the foundation stone for three new buildings at DU: the faculty of technology, a computer centre, and an academic block. Recent developments at Shaheed Bhagat Singh College are another case in point.
The college inaugurated a newly constructed infrastructure project in July last year, featuring air-conditioned classrooms, multipurpose halls, and updated sports facilities.
New hostel facilities are also being developed on similar lines as part of these modernisation efforts. Hindu College has announced plans for new hostels that will offer modern amenities.
All of these are going to be multi-storied buildings, which are carefully designed to utilise maximum carpet area on the minimum possible land.
Officials said they are also required to adhere to strict norms such as rainwater harvesting, solar power generation, and waste treatment.
Jain explained that the motive remains to increase the built-up area by at least 50 per cent compared to traditional buildings.
Other urban planning experts suggested that the ecological and long-term economical benefits of the multi-storied buildings are also a pull factor for many institutions during the process of their revamp.
“The problem is that sometimes high-rise buildings discourage students from stepping out of their classrooms or hostels to the playgrounds and activity areas as they remain confined to their floors, but some institutions are innovative and have come up with common areas in the middle floors allowing easy access for everyone,” contended Seva Ram, who teaches at the School of Planning and Architecture.
Beyond the campuses of DU, a broader transformation is also taking place in the city’s public education system. Schools across Delhi are being revamped, with hundreds of new classrooms and dozens of multi-storied buildings being constructed.
We can no longer develop horizontally because there is a scarcity of land, so we have to look vertically and add floors to buildings that can accommodate classes, hostels, and laboratories.
This is the pattern now not just for educational revamp projects but even for housing or commercial ventures,” experts said.
They explained that these new structures are equipped with modern amenities like lifts and common areas and are designed to create accessible learning environments.
The aim is not only to make them attractive for children but also to ensure that we utilise the limited resources available to us to their full capacity. Spacious modern classrooms with technological advancements are the future of our schools, Seva Ram said.
This shift is further mirrored by the growth of private universities in regions like Noida, Sonipat, and Gurugram, where private institutions have established modern campuses with state-of-the-art infrastructure that integrates environmentally sustainable practices like green buildings and energy-efficient technologies.
The projects in the pipeline range from building new classrooms and hostels to setting up research facilities and laboratories to prepare Delhi’s educational institutions for the demands of the future.
JLF brings such deep-dive sessions from time to time for sure; you can easily find the number of Brits coming to India to study, just ask somebody in TOI's Delhi team, or better still write to metro editor, and you will get the exact numbers in no time. Sanjoy is spot on: there…
— Saket Suman (@writesaket) June 27, 2025
But ensuring the upkeep of older buildings is equally important, especially in institutions where heritage structures play a key role in their identity, cautioned Jain.
(Saket Suman is the author of The Psychology of a Patriot. Among other roles, he was a Special Correspondent at The Times of India and the head of Arts/Books/Culture verticals of what was India's largest independent newswire.)
(Views Expressed Are Author's Own and Do Not Reflect The Views of This News Outlet)