Benninger, alumnus of Massachussetts Institute of Technology�s urban planning school and Harvard University architecture school, came to India in 1968 as a Fulbright Scholar. And never left.

His new project is a �magnum opus�, Benninger describes, a set of buildings and spaces on the cutting edge that will interface with India�s humungous problems.

The architect is currently working on the plans. It is not a large canvas, not even as big as the 500-acre IIT Hyderabad campus he is now designing. But it is an exciting project, he says, one that will break away from India�s 19th Century architecture mould of compartmentalised, hierarchical learning centres�where, for instance, graduate and post-graduate programmes are separated, student and teacher housing is divided, and girls and boys are segregated. He wants this campus to be a pluralistic environment.