Greetings !

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education, a Deemed University established under section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956. It has evolved a comprehensive student centric learning approach consisting of several stages, designed to add significant value to the learner’s understanding in an integrated manner, covering relevant knowledge, practical skills and positive attitudes.

The ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education is a premier educational institution in Telangana State which is accredited by NAAC with ‘A+’ grade. It is dedicated to the cause of teaching and research of global standards. It offers B.Arch., B.Tech., BBA, BBA-LLB (Hons), BA-LLB (Hons), BA (Economics), B.Sc. (Mathematics & Physics), LLM, MBA and Ph.D. Programs. The students are from all parts of India. In fact, there is a mini India on the campus. The University has a student strength of about 6,000 and a faculty strength of over 300.

We envision to develop a new cadre of professionals who will not only command high level of domain proficiency but also have the ability to integrate activities for developing scientific and technological solutions and work standards.

The quality of the programs offered at the University is ensured by the following five factors:

1. Designing a relevant curriculum including soft skills and internship program.
2. Student-centric academic delivery.
3. Continuous evaluation and feedback.
4. Focus on research by the faculty.
5. Industry and foreign collaborations. The University maintains a balance between academic, co-curricular, extra-curricular, and social activities so as to enable the students to become well-rounded persons with concern for the society.

Architectural education par excellence, the objective of the ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education in establishing the ICFAI School of Architecture at Hyderabad campus, is surely poised to be one of the best centers for excellence in this part of the world. A highly competent and experienced Faculty comprising of reputed teaching and practicing professionals is an added advantage. I am sure the ICFAI Group would be a pioneer in setting new educational standards for yet another added discipline with the introduction of a 5-year Bachelors Program in Architecture, (B.Arch). With expertise in the form of advisory, industry and institutional collaborations from India and abroad, it is bringing advanced technology and knowledge through interactions, seminars and workshops, has become part of the regular academic schedules which is being commended all over.

I am sure that the students studying at the ICFAI School of Architecture will stand the very best in achieving the set goals and hope to see the ICFAI School of Architecture ranked among the best in India and the world.

Prof. Venkat R Peesapati,
Design Chair and Professor,
ICFAI School of Architecture.

...by living we learn *

The aim of ISArch is to promote true education for new generations of architects able to challenge the complexity of future scenarios, to become leading actors in the improvement of cities, towns and villages shaped by ethical values. We recognise the role of Architecture as the expression of the cultural identity that day by day forms the urban environment and reciprocally becomes the counterform of the society which shapes our character as citizens. With the awareness of this pivotal task we invite students to invest their intellectual energies and creative potential in the field of Architecture, Urban Design and Town Planning as among the most relevant contribution they can give today in India for the prosperity and resilience of the community at large and consequently for the growth of their personality in the years to come.

Through their physical and cultural persistence, architectural phenomena build the images of our immutable traditions. Meanwhile, we place many of the ambitions and expectations on our cities and new buildings to transmit our values to whom will come next. The Architect-Urbanist is the link between past and future. He has the role, through the interpretation of the present and knowledge of the past, to forecast the possible evolution of our environment. As an archaeologist projected into the future he has the social responsibility to investigate critically what will be the consequences and the impact tomorrow of the choices we are taking today. In India today, the whirling intensity of growth implies the necessity to continuously check the results of development and it becomes vital to provide the new generations of architects with the capability and consciousness to face critically the effects of the tumultuous expansion of the human Habitat. Architects in fact have the dual role to be an instrument of change and the responsibility to preserve the identity of the places they are transforming. This is the ethical background in which the ISArch School of Architecture is developing: building an educational structure that offers young talents a program and a research field rooted in cultural tradition and animated by imaginative thinking that is progressively opening through technological advancements. For student-architects it will become more and more essential to expand their creative skills to project new outlines for a sustainable development. In fact, advances in information technology already allow us to play with our future by simulating virtual worlds and accelerating communication processes, increasing exponentially the gap between making and thinking, between expectations and reality. The architect then finds himself as a tightrope walker suspended in the air to advance in the projection of fantastic futures and at the same time resist as patron and defender of the real world of ‘bricks and mortar’. Consecutively the syllabus has been planned to produce a blend of discipline and freedom, of technical knowledge led by the power of imagination, attaining a balance between the professional realm of construction and planning but keeping the door open to the personal development of each student following their hopes and aspirations. The opposing forces between abstraction and the concrete create the tension to proceed and indicate the way to rediscover the values of the elements of our existence: earth, air, water and sun through the perception of the senses from where we will start our perceptual description of the environment as a whole integrated habitat.

The figure of the architect we aim for will, therefore, have the ability to weave relationships between the disciplines which contribute to shaping the urban environment, for this reason, we believe we can offer, with the multifaceted support of ICFAI, the best conditions to develop professional capability. The organization of an educational path in architecture requires gradual definition of goals, from the simplest topics related to everyday life up to the challenges of high-performance buildings or the design of spaces of public domain. It will create a methodological structure based on a dual cultural attitude: An extensive approach towards vast extra-disciplinary territories to achieve a broad vision of settlement phenomena to keep together different knowledge, and at the same time an intensive approach, aimed at the specificity of building techniques, where every single detail requires fierce perseverance towards perfection. Each section of the route will be illustrated through its fundamental cultural and technical references. A particular emphasis will be applied to specific casestudies, selected for their exemplariness in which future ambitions will be projected in the values and meanings of the projects and constructive criticality, to face the double sense of progress. The effort in the teaching organization is to immediately create the sense of responsibility and the urgency of confronting a broad spectrum of issues, even for simple case studies and theme design studio. The development of the ability to interpret design themes with a multiplicity of looks and to build an incisive and original message will be developed from the first steps of the curriculum through the involvement in design experiences related to specific challenging situations.

The curriculum will prioritise direct knowledge of sites through survey and excursion of topic places, ancient and modern, which signed a shift in the conception of urban spaces like Ajanta, Ellora , Hampi, Fatehpur Sikri and Chandigarh. We aim to extend the experience to other cities worldwide through the collaboration with renowned institutes in Athens, Venice, Berlin and Edinburgh, in a way to reinforce, through scholarship, the possibility of extending the knowledge of crucial places of human innovation. Since the beginning of human enterprise, the way of inhabiting and using the territory has represented the framework to understand the evolution of our ancestors and therefore Architecture holds within the genetic patrimony of being the link between innovation and tradition. A blend of theoretical fundamental and practical experimentation is the essential approach to offer consistent abilities to face the challenge of the possibilities opening to the new generations of architects. A balanced growth of the creative potential of the individual needs to be advanced together with the consciousness for the necessity of a speculative attitude towards divergent fields of knowledge. The involvement of production activities from the construction Industry will develop the ability to create factual links between technical aspects of the construction and production with the needs and deeds represented at large by the different components of Society.

In ISArch studying Architecture, as a core discipline, opens the horizon to provide the intellectual tools to navigate all the branches of design, from the spoon to the city, emphasising the creative potential of each member of our educational community. We promote an educational methodology which wants to be open in giving the freedom to each student to shape their original character and at the same time focused on acquiring the disciplinary tools for the interpretation of reality with a point of view where the awareness of sustainable development dominates all our efforts.

Simply we are looking to share this path with young talents with the interest to grow a sound professional career with the potential to break the mould and do something interesting with their lives for the advantage of the whole community.

.. by living we learn (Vivendo Discimus, Patrick Geddes ..) ... by living we learn (Vivendo Discimus, Patrick Geddes ...)

Dr. Ar. Massimo Vianello,
Advisor and Professor,
ICFAI School of Architecture.