University of New Haven - Riyadh Unveils Innovative Design for its College of Business and Digital Innovation

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, June 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The University of New Haven – Riyadh (NHU-Riyadh) has unveiled the design of its first college, the College of Business and Digital Innovation, opening this autumn at Mohammed Bin Salman Nonprofit City (Misk City) in Riyadh. The design is created by Kampus, a UK studio specialising in evidence-led educational design.

A new kind of college, designed for a new kind of education, the campus will feature classrooms, study spaces and shared areas designed around how students learn, drawing on Kampus' evidence-led approach to acoustic comfort, lighting, sightlines, materials, and inclusive design. The result is a campus shaped as much by how students will study as by what they will study.

Kampus have developed evidence-led design standards for educational environments, creating measurable benchmarks for acoustic comfort, lighting, sightlines, and inclusion that go beyond conventional building requirements. The studio designs every project alongside acoustic and lighting specialists and applies inclusive-design principles across all of its work. At NHU-Riyadh, those standards have been applied to the demands of teaching the next generation of Saudi talent.

"We set out to build a new kind of college for a new kind of education," said Jens Frederiksen, Ph.D., president of the University of New Haven. "That means being as deliberate and strategic about where our students will learn as about what they will learn. Kampus brings to NHU-Riyadh a discipline of evidence-led learning-space design. Our students will feel the difference from day one."

"Experiential learning is the hallmark of a University of New Haven education," said Leo Lester, Ph.D., senior vice president for NHU-Riyadh. "Our students collaborate, build, present, and work with industry. The spaces they learn in should be built for immersive educational experiences, not for listening to lectures. Kampus has designed a college that embraces the way we actually teach."

About University of New Haven-Riyadh
The University of New Haven's international branch campus in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia opens in the autumn of 2026 with the College of Business and Digital Innovation, the first of three colleges planned in the Kingdom. The University holds a foreign branch campus license from the Ministry of Education and is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.