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 school helps students with employment, thanks to it connections with numerous mncs and universities. APA alumni hold top positions in national and international organisations

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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.

About The Author

Anil Dewan

Anil Dewan is Head, Department of Architecture, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi