The School of Planning and Architecture: The Human Habitat
THE SCHOOL OF PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE was founded in 1941 as a Department of Architecture of Delhi Polytechnic and was later affiliated to the University of Delhi. It was then integrated with the School of Town and Country Planning, which was established in 1955 by the Indian government to facilitate rural, urban and regional planning. In 1979, the Ministry of Education and Culture conferred university status to the School of Planning and Architecture. This led to the introduction of new programmes while promoting research and consultancy. The university was honoured as an "Institute of National Importance under an Act of Parliament" in 2015. The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) has also placed the School of Planning and Architecture among the top-ranking universities in India.
The university offers specialised courses related to habitat and training from Bachelor's to the PhD level. The primary concern of the school is the human habitat and environment and this pushes the academics to provide a plethora of courses unique to the institute. The university offers scholarships and incentives to top-ranking students from low-income families.
The SPA New Delhi campus at Indraprastha Estate has ample common areas for students and faculty to engage in breakout sessions. The facilities provided include an open-access library offering more than 30,000 books and journals, a GIS centre, a remote-sensing centre, and a workshop and material testing laboratory. The university has a documentation-cum-publication unit, which provides a platform for sharing knowledge on the Space journal.
The departments in the university include architecture, physical planning, architectural conservation, building engineering and management, environmental planning, housing, industrial design, landscape architecture, regional planning, urban design, urban planning, and transport planning. The faculty implements a unique pedagogy of practical and theoretical training. Also, there are numerous lectures by visiting faculty that encourage interdisciplinary activity and cooperation among universities.
The institute participates in numerous research and consultancy projects, such as the Design Innovations Center, Community-Led Heritage Regeneration in India: Agra Riverfront, Role of Private Slum Developers in Low-Income Settlements in Delhi and Dhaka, Study of In-Situ Rehabilitation of Slums in Delhi, ENVIS Center on Human Settlements, Comprehensive Conservation Management Plan for National Archives of India Building, Indo-Norway Research Project on Transport Sector Strategies for Climate Change and Indo- Highway Capacity manual.
Seminars, workshops and conferences act as platforms to spread knowledge and open new horizons. The school helps students with employment, thanks to its connections with numerous MNCs and universities. SPA alumni hold top positions in national and international organisations. All these make the School of Planning and Architecture the first choice for construction professionals.