An analysis of 121 of our projects: how much building public campuses place on their land, sector by sector, what drives the difference, and what it costs per square metre.
Every project page on this website records a built-up area and a site area. Taken together, they say something about how public institutions in India use land. We looked at the 121 projects where both figures are known, and compared the ratio of built-up area to site area, sector by sector.
What the numbers show
Public campuses are mostly land
The median jail places about 0.17 m² of building on each square metre of its site, and the median education campus about 0.22. IIT Kanpur, with about 2,50,000 m² of building on 1,055 acres, is near 0.06. Housing sits at the other end, with a median of about 1.7.
The open land does work
In a jail, the ratio is low because of the 30-metre clear zones, patrolling roads and staff housing that security needs. On a campus, it is low because of playing fields, reserves for future buildings and trees: at Mahatma Gandhi Central University in Motihari the plan keeps every existing tree, and at the NLCIL township at Sambalpur more than half the land is left green. A low ratio is not waste. It is space doing a different job.
City buildings work their land harder
Government offices and culture and mobility projects have a median of about 0.74, three to four times a campus. The UNESCO MGIEP campus in New Delhi places about 11,362 m² on 1.99 acres, a ratio of about 1.4, and still keeps 222 existing trees by building around them.
And per square metre
The same pages record a project value for most projects. Dividing it by built-up area gives a rough cost intensity for 136 projects.
Affordable housing is the leanest, at a median of about ₹23,000 per m². Jails, offices and culture and mobility projects are the most intensive, at roughly ₹50,000 to ₹64,000 per m², because of security works, services or civic finishes. Healthcare sits in the middle at about ₹43,000 per m².
How to read these figures
- Project values are as shown on our project pages: sanctioned, estimated or tendered, in the rupees of their own year, from 1995 to 2026. They are not adjusted for inflation.
- Some values include site development, roads and external services; some do not.
- Medians are used because a few very large or very small projects would distort an average.
The figures are a starting point for a conversation about a brief, not a cost estimate. For a real project we work from the brief, the site and current schedules of rates.
References
- ARCH-EN DESIGN project pages, built-up area, site area and project value as published on this website, October 2026 (121 projects with both areas; 136 with area and value).
