architecture of delhi - post 1947 developments-buildings part1

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ARCHITECTURE OF DELHI

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Background

Post 1947 Developments-Buildings Part1

Part2Housing Sector

THE TRACKING OF POST INDEPENDENCE

DEVELOPMENTS

From traditional to global image

From government led development to private developers

From Nehru Place to corporate parks

From Housing colonies to apartment blocks

From sandstone and dholpur to glass facades

From the Mughal to the British Imperial to the present Individual statements in

architecture

What follows is a brief overview of the developments that have made a significant

contribution in the post Independence scenario of Delhi in the public buildings sector

and then the housing sector

a) The way the public buildings came about

Senior architect (1953-70), and then Chief Architect of CPWD(1970-4), Rahman was

responsible for many of the buildings that give central Delhi it’s present character; the post and

telegraph building (1954),the auditor and general controller’s office, the Indraprastha

Bhavan, the WHO building (1962) and the multi storey flats at RK Puram (1964) and the

Patel Bhavan (1972-73).

It was the work of Gropius and the International style that overwhelmingly influenced the younger

architects of the period. During the 1950’s the influence of the international style began to be

widely evident in houses, whether Mistri or architect designed.

Horizont al bands of large glass windows, freestanding staircases and cantilevered porches

were the main features. Plinths became lower, living and dining rooms were combined and, in

houses for the wealthy, bathrooms became attached to bedrooms. Windows in many houses

began to be recessed and concrete fins began to appear on the facades. The massing

became horizontal. Reinforced concrete became the material of the modern era not only for

houses but even more for public buildings.

Tuberculosis Association Building

Walter Sykes George (1881-1962) was an English architect in the post Independence era.

(He had designed the St Stephens College,built in 1941). George's design for the Tuberculosis

Association Building in New Delhi shows a modification of the prevalent International styles. The

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building’s adjustable lightweight horizontal louvers place it

clearly in a contemporary Modernist context. George's

use of materials in the building does, however, show

continuity with much Anglo-Indian architecture of the

1930's.

The central and state pwds and their offshoots such as

the DDA (estab provisionally in 1955 and finally in 1957when it absorbed the Delhi Improvement trust) continued

to work much as before Independence. They were

primarily involved in the design of public buildings and

large-scale housing developments. The design efforts of

the architects of the CPWD in New Delhi have made a

major impression on the city.

Many of the buildings such as Vayu Bhavan, Krishi

Bhavan, Udyog Bhavan, Rail

Bhavan(below,left),Vigyan Bhavan(below,right) and theSupreme court (1952) use chattris and chajja's, and

are topped by domes to give an Indian character. The

plain cubical mass of a government conference hall, the Vigyan Bhawan, which was designed

by RI Geholote of the CPWD for large international conferences, uses elements from Buddhist,

Hindu and Mughal architecture. The large entrance is of black marble and glass and is shaped

in the form of a chaitya arch of the Ajanta style, symbolizing”the Indian heritage of peace and

culture." The arch motif became an easily recognized and frequently employed symbol of Indian

identity, applicable to a wide variety of structures.

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court was designed by Deolalikar in an Indo British architectural style as it is

located in Lutyen's complex. It is regarded as rather heavy headed.For example the chattris

have square 15 by 15-inch columnar supports which stand in strong contrast to the elegance of those at Fatehpur Sikri or in Lutyens or Baker's work.





Towards the next decade-the sixties

The sixties brought about the presence of Joseph Allen Stein onto the architectural scene of

Delhi. His work of the period - the India international centre (1959-62) and the

AmericanInternationalSchool (1962-68)- comes more out of the American Empiricist

tradition than the European Rationalist and its concern for orthogonal geometry particularly in

the sitting of buildings.

His later work in the Ford Foundation building (1969) and Triveni Kala Sangamand the

UNICEF building (1981) shows a continuous intellectual development. Few other architects

have retained so independent and consistent a line of thought. Despite such works, it was the

work of Gropius and the international style that overwhelmingly influenced the younger architects

of the period.

It is possible to tentatively distinguish between those architects who consciously or

unconsciously followed in the European Rationalist tradition inspired by Le Corbusian lines of

thought and those who were Empiricists following in the footsteps of Wright, Stein and Kahn.

The Indian Institute of Technology (above left) campus (1961) designed by Jugal Kishore

Choudhary and the JawaharlalNehruUniversity (above right) campus by the CPWD and

Mr CP Kukreja show influence of Rationalist thinking. The IIT Delhi is a less direct image of Le

Corbusier's work than the PunjabUniversity plan. It consists of the academic buildings, housings

and research facilities and faculty and staff residences. The former consists of three storey

parallel blocks and a seven-storey block perpendicular to the longest of the three storey locks,

which it joins to the administration. The buildings are linked by covered ways, which form





courtyards-, a marriage of Oxbridge and Le Corbusian patterns.

The use of concrete for the main blocks contrasts with the rough stone aggregate of the lecture

theatres and the multi story staircases provide sculptural elements penetrating the courtyards.

Akbar Hotel

The Akbar hotel (1965) designed for the Delhi MunicipalCommittee owes a lot to the Unit'ed' habitation by Le

Corbusier. This building, which formed part of a new

commercial center built in south Delhi in the 1970s,

echoed many of the qualities of the Chandigarh

secretariat in its use of concrete and its sculptural surface

pattern.

It is a thirteen-strorey concrete slab building, which forms

part of a larger commercial complex. A service floor

separates the bedrooms above from the common areason the lower floors. Like the Unite, the roof has

"communal facilities"- in this case, a restaurant, garden

and small open air theatre. A two storey curvilinear block

juts out at the base, echoing the form of the MillownersBuilding in Ahmedabad. It houses

restaurants and lounges..

Shri Ram Centre

Prasad's other work, which clearly picks up on Le

Corbusier's thought processed is the Shri Ram centre

of a private trust promoting dance, drama and music.

Like much of Prasad's works of the period, it is built of

reinforced concrete and expresses, through architectural

form, the variety of functions the building is to house. For

instance, the theatre is in a cylindrical form and the

rehearsal spaces are in the form of a rectangular mass.

Many of the spaces have to serve a multiplicity of

purposes and hence are open ended in design; there hasalso been a major effort to have the interior and outdoor

spaces linked together.

The work in India that followed the Empiricist approach originally owed a great a debt to

Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright; it was more thoughtful in dealing with the local

contexts. Later the influence was continued through the works of Louis Kahn. Stein and

Mansigh Rana (Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Library) (1968) .

Structural buildings

Architecture in India has had a long engineering tradition and structural engineers such as

Mahendra Raj and H.K. Sen are amongst those whose collaborative work with architects





created many innovative buildings. Raj's works include

the Delhi cloth Mill (1970), the Permanent Exhibition

complex (Pragati Maidan-1972) and the National Co-

operative Development Corporation building.

The period since the 1960's has been an era in which issues of cultural identity have also been

raised, not only in India, but also in countries, such as France, which felt culturally threatened by

changes taking place in and around them. Perhaps the fundamental problem with the Modern

movement was that architects used the forms of buildings and urban designs as a symbol of

progress and democracy rather than attempting to deal with the broader array of human needs.

The geometric patterns of Modernism became used as a set of types for all architectural works

by a number of architects. The patterns of these buildings became embedded in the minds of

the clients as expressions of progress. Much of the continuing Modernist work consists of

commercial buildings, some of which stand out because of their distinctive character. This

character may arise from their location-they are single towers in an otherwise lower scaled built

environment or they have a design different from the norm.

The former group includes such buildings as the Vikas Minar of the DDA and the latter is

exemplified by buildings like the LIC (below,left) by Charles Correa in CP. It is a stone and

mirror glass building under a steel framed parasol set on a podium and dwarfs the Connaught

circus buildings(below, right) designed by Tor Russell.Both the buildings are substantially

different from their surroundings as well as from standard commercial buildings

In response to concern about the changing face of new Delhi, the urban arts commission was

set up by the parliament in 1973 and given powers of approval over structures of "public

importance". Its members proved either unwilling or unable, however, to halt the spread of high-

rise building.

The 1962 plan had included a system for controlling the height of buildings by creating a floor-

area ratio in which height was related to plot size, with ratios varying according to the zone of

the city. The most generous height allowances were projected for the business district adjacentto Connaught place.

Included in various proposals for the district was a scheme produced by Raj Rewal and Kuldip





singh in 1968 for the controlled redevelopment of barakhamba and Curzon roads.

They suggested that tower blocks be set back from the street alignment, to be partially

screened by a raised pedestrian plaza and an irregular line of relatively low buildings. A similar

proposal was made in 1969 for Janpath(below,left) another broad artery leading into

Connaught place. This street was to continue as a shopping area, with low-rise buildings

bordering the street and tall buildings set within the blocks. In practice, however, the district had

no unified plan, becoming instead the focus of spontaneous high-rise development.

The old unity of style, moreover, was supplanted by flamboyantly competing forms. Contributing

to the dramatic new profile of the commercial center was the life Insurance corporation of

India building by Charles Correa, together with the state trading

corporation (below,right) and the new town hall by Raj Rewal and Kuldip Singh. The

large column free framework in vertical shafts creates large spans and allows for a variety of

forms to be hung between them.

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