Visual Credits: SMI, Ajith Samuel       

After two exciting and exhilarating decades of growing, evolving and maturing, there comes a time in an institution’s journey when it seeks a permanent home and wings to become a national and international center of excellence.

From the academic year 2020-21, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), a Deemed to be University began to admit students to the newly formed “Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology”.

This new institute has become a part of MAHE’s off-campus (branch campus) at Bengaluru. MAHE is an institution recognised as Institute of Eminence by the Government of India. This shall provide Srishti Manipal with a world class infrastructure in the near future and increased access to international opportunities via the University’s global networks. The distinctive multi-dimensional approach to trans-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary capability development refined over the years at Srishti remains intact, as well as the commitment to building creative “competencies ahead of the curve”.

Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology envisions to be an institute of global excellence providing high quality education and opportunities for research in the fields of art, design, media, business, technology, humanities, sciences, law and others. View Srishti Manipal’s New Campus: A Story in Participative Design

Proud to announce that the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology (SMI), MAHE Bengaluru Campus will partner with the World Design Organisation (WDO)®, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), and the Association of Designers of India (ADI) in hosting Bengaluru’s World Design Protopolis (WDP)™ Project. This project will address issues related to urban transformation, public health, mobility and the revitalisation of the region’s watersheds and urban parks.

The project comes with significant funding by the Government of Karnataka (GoK) and is spread over five years. The five-year period will use creative economy and the city’s stakeholders from public, private, CSO and citizen actors to improve and help raise the profile of the city, improve liveability, and even bring in investments into technology, manufacturing and service startups and the infrastructure of the city.

SMI, ADI and the GOK had made a bid for World Design Capital (WDC) in 2019 and made it to the final shortlist along with Valencia (Spain). Bengaluru’s proposal was called Protopolis, a combination of the terms Megalopolis and Prototype. Although Valencia was awarded the WDC title, the Protopolis proposal was so impactful that a new designation of World Design Protopolis was created by World Design Organization and awarded to Bengaluru in November 2019 for the years 2023-2028. Bengaluru is the first World Design Protopolis (WDP).

The WDP project offers opportunities for students from other constituent units in MAHE Bengaluru from Management, Technology, Law, and Humanities to work in interdisciplinary teams with designers from around the globe, and with students from other universities across the city offering design programs in a real work environment, deliver effective solutions and be job-ready by the time they graduate. Further, it also offers entrepreneurship opportunities for multi-disciplinary teams that can get support as WDP fellows as they finetune their concepts for external venture investment.