By Keyoor Purani

Universities have always been more than centers of instruction—they are environments that shape ideas, character, and community. Across centuries, institutions of higher learning have relied on architecture not merely for shelter but to signal aspiration, scholarship, and community building. A 2016 research study based on data from 103 American universities, published in the Planning for Higher Education Journal, even establishes the influence of campus qualities on graduation outcomes.

Cambridge’s cloisters or IIM Bangalore’s pergolas are not accidental in form; they were built to convey robustness, rhythm, and reflection. The arcades, towers, walkways, and symmetry don’t just hold academic activities; they shape scholarly behaviour and institutional pride. In the U.S., buildings like Yale’s Beinecke Library, in translucent marble, and MIT’s Stata Center by Frank Gehry imply that architecture can reflect even modernity, disruption, and even playfulness in the intellectual endeavors. Jonas Salk, polio vaccine developer and founder of the Salk Institute, famously asked for a space that would ‘invite’ great minds, and the resulting plaza is now considered among the most contemplative architectural spaces ever created.

These examples underscore a consistent insight: that great campuses do not just house learning, they exteriorize it. Architecture becomes part of the institutional language that communicates values long before a lecture.

Temples of thought

Leading academic institutes and universities in India, too, have always valued the campus architecture and aesthetics of learning spaces. India’s educational architecture across the country reflects its time and its values.

Take St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai, established in 1869 and housed in one of the most filmed educational buildings in India. Its pointed arches and stained-glass windows evoke the scholastic architecture of 19th-century Europe. Beyond its aesthetics, the structure embeds a cultural and civic presence as an academic institution during the colonial period. Similarly, the Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, established in 1949, illustrates how princely India invested in academic and artistic infrastructure. The architecture reflects the vision of Sayajirao Gaekwad, who saw education as self-strengthening for a modern India. Even today, the visual language of domes, jalis, and columns carries a quiet continuity of that enlightenment-era ambition.

Among the earliest modern campuses is the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, designed by Louis Kahn in the 1960s. Kahn’s exposed brick walls, circular voids, and monumental arches aimed to reflect a secular temple of learning. His work remains an architectural icon for management education in India. A few decades later, in the Western Ghats, Joseph Stein, known for his “regional modernism”, sculpted the IIM Kozhikode campus. Adapting to the hilltop terrain, Stein used local materials to design buildings that are as environmentally integrated as they are pedagogically effective.

More recently, newer private universities are asserting their identities through contemporary architectural expression. Flame University, Pune, engaged B V Doshi, who is credited with the architectural design of IIM Bangalore, IIM Udaipur, and NIFT Delhi. In Indore, a young university engaged architect Sanjay Puri, known for his climate-responsive designs, to create its Stephill campus. Here, built forms rise from the earth in stepped rhythms: all framed not just as aesthetic features, but integral to how students live and learn on campus.

Grey or green?

While architectural excellence can elevate the learning experience, it is not a substitute for academic depth. Great buildings do not guarantee great education. Grand entrances and domes cannot make up for hollow classrooms. Some newer private campuses present monumental domes that offer little in terms of pedagogical innovation, exemplifying how architectural spectacle sometimes overshadows academic substance.

Can Indian universities ensure that investments in built form are matched by investments in mentorship, intellectual intensity, and research ecosystems? Can they balance the grey (cement, steel, structure) with the green (ecology, openness, adaptability)? Can buildings not just impress, but also stimulate? These questions become especially urgent as education shifts into hybrid formats. Can physical campuses still offer something that digital platforms cannot—a sense of presence, of context, of unscripted encounter?

Perhaps the answer lies not in scale, but in sanctity. A well-framed corridor or an amphitheater may not teach a course, but it might ignite a conversation. It may foster an exchange of ideas that no timetable can schedule. That is where architecture quietly earns its place, as a catalyst.

The best campuses do not dazzle. They invite. They don’t just stand, they mean. And in that layered meaning, learning begins.

* The author is the Vice Chancellor of Prestige University Indore.