University of Indonesia

Indonesia's flagship public university, set on a 320-hectare lakeside campus

The Universitas Indonesia (UI) campus in Depok is one of the most distinctive in Southeast Asia: a 320-hectare park containing eight artificial lakes, dense secondary forest, and a sprinkle of academic buildings in modernist Javanese style. The signature building is the Central Library, a hollow-ziggurat in concrete and glass on the eastern shore of Kenanga Lake, which holds 1.5 million volumes and has free wifi for visitors.

Anyone can walk in — the gates are open and there is no security check for casual visitors. Locals come on weekends to jog the perimeter road (about seven kilometres), feed monitor lizards at the lakeside, and picnic under the rain trees. The campus is well served by the Universitas Indonesia and Pondok Cina stations on the Jakarta–Bogor commuter line, both about 45 minutes from central Jakarta.

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A story
The Depok campus opened in 1987 when the university — until then scattered across central Jakarta — consolidated on what was largely empty rubber plantation land. The architects deliberately left half the site as a forest preserve, which is why the campus today is the only meaningful green lung in the Jabodetabek corridor between Jakarta and Bogor.