O.P. Jindal global university

Sonepat, India

Photo © Edmund Sumner

Photo © Sanjeet Wahi

Photo © Edmund Sumner

Photo © S.P.A. Design

Photo © Edmund Sumner

Architects: SPA Design Pvt Ltd

Location: Sonepat, India
Year: 2009

The campus for the O.P. Jindal Global University is planned in an entirely flat agricultural land, 10 km away from the city of Sonepat, on the remain of the mythical Grand Trunk Road that was going through Northern India, from Afghanistan to Burma.

As a Greenfield project with no built context, the design started on a very rigorous geometrical framework of traces regulateurs of squares and golden rectangles, dear to European architecture as well as Indian architecture.

The project is designed like a vast classical garden where the nature has been tamed by the rule of geometry as the metaphor for the men pacified by the rule of law.

At the center is the academic square based on 6 courtyards clubbing together lines of classrooms and faculty offices, while auditoria, reception, library and cafeteria occupy the center of each courtyard. The main structures are large span steel bridges entirely flexible inside. All buildings are on pilotis to offer a continuous shaded park below the structures.

Beside the academic square are the 2 students complexes made of pavilions in exposed concrete varying in heights and covered with terrace gardens. They create 4 courtyards of different proportions.

The faculty housing is a line of immeubles villas forming the visual boundary of the campus.

All the buildings come together around a network of gardens and parks, reintroducing the lost landscape of agricultural fields and vegetable gardens into the university.