Architecture
A Campus That Moves With You!
Sanjay Puri Architects designed Prestige University as a climate-responsive campus shaped by movement, interaction, and light.
What if a university didn’t feel like a collection of buildings, but like a landscape you move through?
Located on the expanding 13-hectare campus of Prestige University in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, this five-storey academic building rethinks how learning environments are shaped. Designed by Sanjay Puri Architects, it combines offices, seminar halls, an auditorium, a library, and a café, yet avoids the conventional institutional block feel.
At its core, the project is about movement and interaction. Instead of isolating functions, the design connects them through a series of open, flowing spaces, where circulation becomes as important as destination.
The building rises diagonally from its northern edge, gradually stepping up to a height of 28 metres. This shift in form is not just visual; it creates terraces, pockets, and gathering spaces that encourage informal learning.
Here, education spills out of classrooms and into the spaces in between.
The most striking feature is its 9,000-square-metre walkable roof - a sculptural, inhabitable surface made up of 463 stepped platforms.
Inspired by India’s historic stepwells, the design transforms the roof into a social condenser.
“Stepwells were not just for water; they were places of gathering, interaction, and community.”
This idea is reinterpreted here at an architectural scale. The terraces become:
Places to sit, study, and pause
Informal discussion zones
Open-air classrooms
Event spaces
Together, they can even function as a large amphitheatre for up to 9,000 people.
The campus has already hosted Independence Day celebrations, lectures, and games on these terraces, proving that the design is not just symbolic, but actively used.
Accessibility is thoughtfully integrated, with four terraces reachable via wheelchair hoists.
Indore’s climate plays a decisive role in shaping the architecture.
At the base, a shallow water body helps passively cool the structure. Combined with the stepped massing, this reduces heat gain and improves comfort across the building.
Other strategies include:
Angled forms that minimise direct solar exposure
Deep recesses and shaded terraces
Perforated façades that allow ventilation
Reduced dependence on mechanical cooling
The building is deliberately low-lying and spread out, reducing the need for vertical circulation while enhancing environmental performance.
The material palette is robust, local, and expressive:
Concrete structure paired with fly ash bricks
Exterior finished in clay brick cladding
GFRC perforated screens for shading and ventilation
Interiors lined with Indian sandstone flooring
Exposed concrete surfaces that reveal the building’s structure
Nothing feels overly polished or concealed. The architecture embraces its construction, allowing texture, light, and shadow to define the experience.
Inside, the design continues its language of openness and flow.
Spaces are flexible, functional, and connected - encouraging interaction beyond formal settings. Circulation zones double up as social spaces, while visual connections across levels reinforce the sense of continuity.
The interiors don’t compete with the architecture, they quietly extend it.
What makes this project stand out is not just its bold geometry, but its intent.
It reduces visual mass through stepping
It turns the roof into usable public space
It integrates climate into form
It encourages community through design
The campus becomes less about infrastructure, and more about experience, interaction, and shared space.
