National Institute of Immunology Case Study: Plan, Courts and Stone (Raj Rewal)

The National Institute of Immunology (NII) in New Delhi is a research campus designed by Raj Rewal on a stepped, rocky site within the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus. Rewal began work in 1983 and the institute was dedicated in 1986; laboratories stand on the highest ground, housing clusters sit near the entrance, and one surface of sandstone aggregate covers every building. Below: the brief, the plan, the stone, and what the record does not tell you.

The brief and the client: a new national institute

The institute's own history traces it to the early 1980s, when the Science and Engineering Research Council of the Department of Science and Technology named immunology a priority area. NII was registered as an autonomous society on 24 June 1981. Its first Governing Body met on 27 July 1981 under Prof M G K Menon, and Prof G P Talwar was invited as Honorary Director that August.

Until it had buildings of its own, NII worked in laboratory space at AIIMS. Construction on land within the JNU campus began on 27 October 1983, when Prof Menon laid the foundation stone of the first building, the Scholars Home. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi dedicated the institute to the nation on 6 October 1986, with two international symposia held for the occasion.

The programme was a small town for scientists: laboratories, animal houses, apartments, the scholars' home, an auditorium, a canteen and a swimming pool, by the institute's list. Rewal's office adds a library, study rooms, a director's house and separate housing for professors, married assistants and unmarried researchers. The institute says the design was meant to keep the natural rocky incline while fitting all of this onto it.

When was it built? The sources differ because the campus was built in stages. M+ Hong Kong, which holds Rewal's drawings, dates the project 1983 to 1990 and says it was realised in two phases. The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture entry on Rewal gives 1984 to 1990. Rewal's own project page gives 1983 to 2000 for phase 1, and a second page gives 2000 to 2010 for phase 2 housing. The Centre Pompidou lists a site plan dated 1990 as a built project. For a jury, "designed from 1983, dedicated in 1986, first phase complete around 1990", with the sources named, is the safest summary.

Site and context: rock, a slope and a view

The land is on Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, within the JNU campus in South Delhi. The institute calls it rocky terrain with green cover, overlooking the Qutab Minar. M+ describes a stepped, rocky site overlooking the National Park. Rewal's office calls it undulating, with natural rock formations. The area is given as 21 acres by NII and 19 acres by Rewal's office; we could not settle the difference.

The design came straight after Rewal's housing for the 1982 Asian Games, which the Oxford entry dates 1980 to 1982 and describes as "a development with courts, terraces, and elements suggesting vernacular origins". M+ places NII as a continuation of that work: in its collection note on the Raj Rewal Drawings, the institute is the next step in "Rewal's ideas of urban clustering".

Concept: Raj Rewal's architecture style, a campus as a town

The clearest early reading is by the historian William J R Curtis, in an essay for a monograph on Rewal published in France in 1986 and quoted on Rewal's project page. Curtis writes that Rewal conceived the ensemble as "an analogue of a traditional town", with courts, galleries, level changes and a uniform use of materials and colours. He names the formal themes as primary and secondary axes, routes, stratified levels and "outdoor rooms", and calls the whole a modern reinterpretation of Fatehpur Sikri, the Mughal palace city.

Treat the Fatehpur Sikri reference as a critic's reading, written while the campus was going up, not a rule Rewal published. The idea is about organisation, not ornament. M+ puts it plainly: the angular axes and shifts in scale give the campus "a density and richness" that recall traditional Indian urban forms, and its "modular logic of accumulation" lets it absorb a difficult site and changing needs.

National Institute of Immunology architecture: plan and zoning

Put the main descriptions together and the plan reads in bands from the entrance to the high ground.

• Housing near the entrance. Rewal's office says each type of dwelling sits in its own cluster close to the site entrance. M+ adds that apartment buildings for researchers, staff and students line the north, east and south edges, each with its own smaller internal courtyard, surrounded by green space.
• A link building. To the west, M+ describes a seminar and cafeteria building with an occupiable roof that links the housing to the research centre. In effect it is the shared middle of the campus.
• Laboratories on top. The research centre is the largest building, and M+ says its four corners branch off into terraced extensions. Curtis: the route climbs towards the laboratories, which occupy the highest points of the site.
• A spine. Curtis notes that a central building acts as a gateway and that its axis corresponds with the main spine of the scheme. The sources we read do not say which building that is, so our diagram shows the spine without placing the gateway.
• Parkland left alone. The open parkland alongside was kept in its natural state, Curtis writes, which makes the scheme a landscape idea as much as a building one.

Our diagram is a zoning sketch, not Rewal's plan: shapes and sizes are ours, and the entrance side is inferred from the housing sitting near it. To see the real layout, M+ holds a layout plan, a section and two perspectives (series CA32/5, viewable by appointment at its Research Centre), and the Centre Pompidou holds Rewal's 1990 site plan and housing plans, given by Raj Rewal Associates in 2012. Both are under Rewal's copyright, and the Pompidou marks its sheets as not for reproduction, which is why we draw our own.

Read as a gradient of privacy: homes nearest the gate, shared rooms in the middle, laboratories furthest in and highest up. Test any campus plan this way: list the zones, then the order a visitor meets them in. Our field checklist for documenting a building sets out how to record that on site.

Section and structure: a route that climbs

NII's section is the slope itself: the buildings step with the ground rather than levelling it. The research centre's terraced corners and the seminar building's usable roof are the two built moves the sources name that work with the levels. Phase 2, Rewal's office says, put a series of pedestrian courtyards of varying scale on the highest level, with housing built around them on two sloping sides.

On structure, only M+ says anything: the buildings "express concrete frame structures", read as a grid on the facade. No source we could open names the structural engineer, gives spans or describes foundations on the rock. For those, look at the drawings at M+ and the Pompidou, and the June 1989 Architectural Record listed in Rewal's bibliography.

Materials and construction: bands of stone

The finish is what most visitors remember. Rewal's office says the buildings are covered in a washed grit finish containing beige and pink sandstone pebbles. M+ is more specific about the pattern: a red sandstone aggregate marks each floor level, while a yellowish-beige aggregate fills the remaining surfaces. Its collection note puts it slightly differently, as grids of red sandstone aggregate "infilled with the same material in pink". Either way the logic is the same: a darker band traces the frame and floors, and a paler aggregate fills the panels between.

Washed grit is a render, not a stone cladding. In general practice, a top coat of cement and stone chips goes over a base coat and is washed before it hardens, so the chips show. Our diagram shows that general method; the sources do not give NII's mix or thicknesses. What the sources do say is why it matters: M+ writes that the shared treatment unifies buildings of very different shapes, and Curtis lists "a uniform use of materials and colours" as part of the town analogy.

For Delhi readers, the reference is close to home: M+ reads the campus as combining modern and Mughal references in its materials, forms and layout. Our guides to natural stone for houses and building materials in Delhi NCR cover where sandstone comes from and how it is used today.

Light, climate and services: what is documented

This is the thinnest part of the record. None of the sources we could open describes NII's shading devices, windows, ventilation or how the laboratories are serviced. What they do support:

• Courts and outdoor rooms. Each housing block has its own internal court (M+), and Curtis names outdoor rooms as a theme. In Delhi's climate, courts give shaded outdoor space and light into deep plans; that is our general reading, not a measured claim about NII.
• Usable roofs and terraces. The seminar building's occupiable roof and the research centre's terraced corners give outdoor space at upper levels.

If your study needs the environmental detail, M+ holds four drawings (a layout plan of around 1983, a section and two perspectives), and the MIT Libraries' Aga Khan Visual Archive holds an exterior photograph of NII from 1985, courtesy of Peter Serenyi. These are primary records you can request or cite.

Reception: what was said, and what came next

The campus was published while it was being built: Rewal's project page lists Techniques et Architecture (Paris, 1985), Inside Outside (Bombay, 1987), Architectural Record (New York, June 1989) and Hasan-Uddin Khan's Contemporary Asian Architects (Taschen). Two museums, M+ in Hong Kong and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, now hold its drawings.

The building also shaped later commissions. The National Centre for Biological Sciences' archive in Bangalore holds a 1992 Architect Subcommittee review report on choosing an architect, which includes details of Rewal's NII work, and the NCBS history page records that its campus was designed by Rewal. His office's research buildings list also includes the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in New Delhi (1989 to 1994) and the National Brain Research Centre in Manesar.

On the other side of the ledger, we found no dated, named account of leaks, failures, major alterations or demolition proposals at NII. That is not proof there were none; it means none is in the record we could read. The one documented change is growth: phase 2 housing, which Rewal's office says was built slowly, letting it respond to the needs of incoming scientists and the availability of funds.

What designers in India can take from it today

These are our reading of the building, for students and practices working on institutional campuses.

1. Let the ground set the order. NII puts its most controlled spaces on the highest, furthest ground and its homes near the gate. On a sloping site, sorting the brief by privacy and then by level can give the plan before any building is drawn.
2. One material treatment can hold many buildings together. A single surface, here sandstone aggregate in two colours, lets buildings of different shapes read as one place. A good render with local aggregate can give much of the effect of stone cladding.
3. Plan for the second phase on day one. M+ calls the campus a modular logic of accumulation, and the record bears it out: dedicated in 1986, built on into the 1990s, extended again from 2000 to 2010. A campus that is designed as clusters can be added to without breaking its plan.
4. Design the spaces between. Courts, paths and terraces appear in every description. On a research campus, outdoor rooms are part of the brief, not left-over space. If this is a thesis direction for you, our thesis topics by typology list research and institutional campuses.

Visiting

NII is a working research institute on Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, New Delhi 110067. Its contact page gives the address, telephone numbers and email, and lists no public visiting arrangements. For a study visit, write to the institute first and ask what access it allows.

Looking for an architect who plans from the site up? Find an architect on MOA.

FAQ

Who is the architect of the National Institute of Immunology?

Raj Rewal, of Raj Rewal Associates, New Delhi. He began work on the institute in 1983. No source we could open names the structural engineer.

What is the established year of the National Institute of Immunology?

NII was registered as an autonomous society on 24 June 1981. The foundation stone of its first building was laid on 27 October 1983, and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi dedicated it to the nation on 6 October 1986.

When was the NII campus built?

In phases. M+ Hong Kong dates the project 1983 to 1990, the Oxford Dictionary of Architecture 1984 to 1990, and Rewal's office 1983 to 2000 for phase 1, with phase 2 housing from 2000 to 2010.

The National Institute of Immunology comes under which ministry?

Its website describes it as an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India.

What is special about the architecture of the National Institute of Immunology?

It is planned like a small town on a rocky slope: housing clusters with their own courts near the entrance, a seminar and cafeteria building in the middle, and laboratories on the highest ground, all finished in a washed grit render of red and paler sandstone aggregate. William J R Curtis called it a modern reinterpretation of Fatehpur Sikri.

Sources

• National Institute of Immunology: History (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• National Institute of Immunology: Home page, for its status under the Department of Biotechnology (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• National Institute of Immunology: Contact us (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Raj Rewal Associates: National Institute of Immunology Phase 1, New Delhi, 1983 to 2000, with text from William J R Curtis's essay for a 1986 monograph on Rewal (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Raj Rewal Associates: National Institute of Immunology Phase 2, New Delhi, 2000 to 2010 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Raj Rewal Associates: Research projects (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• M+ Hong Kong: Drawings, National Institute of Immunology (1983 to 1990), New Delhi, India (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• M+ Hong Kong: Raj Rewal Drawings (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• M+ Hong Kong: Layout plan, National Institute of Immunology (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Centre Pompidou: Raj Rewal, Plan d'aménagement, Institut national d'immunologie, 1990 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Encyclopedia.com, from A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (Oxford): Rewal, Raj (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• MIT Libraries, Dome (Aga Khan Visual Archive): National Institute of Immunology, exterior, 1985, courtesy of Peter Serenyi (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• NCBS Archives: 1992 Architect Subcommittee Review Report, Comparisons and selection (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• National Centre for Biological Sciences: History (accessed 4 Nov 2026)