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ARCHITECTURE OF DELHI

THE TRACKING OF POST INDEPENDENCE DEVELOPMENTS

From traditional to global imageFrom government led development to private developersFrom Nehru Place to corporate parksFrom Housing colonies to apartment blocksFrom sandstone and dholpur to glass facadesFrom 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.

Horizontal 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 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 1957 when 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 the Supreme 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 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 Municipal Committee 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 areas on 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 has also 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 adjacent to 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.

10 Easy Steps to Succeed in Your Online Classes

Congratulations Youve made up our minds to pursue your upper schooling, and doing so online is how to pass if you have an interest in a versatile, studentcentered educating manner. Studying online permits you to pursue different pursuits and attend to different responsibilities whilst nonetheless operating your method towards some extent. However, it will now and again imply that its clean to get distracted. Here are 10 clean steps to verify luck on your online categories.

  1. Connect together with your instructors once conceivable. Even in case you are doing smartly within the category, its extraordinarily vital to increase a rapport together with your trainer. When you do that early on, you temporarily understand what the priorities are within the route, what expectancies the professor has of you and youre going to be motivated to prevail, surer of whats forward and higher ready to do smartly with the impending subject material.

Valuable questions to invite your trainer come with the next

How versatile are you with time limits How versatile are you with grownup freshmen What applied sciences do you employ within the route How to be had are you through e mail and different sorts of verbal exchange How do you put up an internet neighborhood and what are the expectancies for participation in it In addition, since instructors are to be had to lend a hand all over the classes, its all the time just right to have had private touch with the trainer early on. This method, when you wish to have lend a hand, its more straightforward to achieve out and get the help you wish to have.

  1. Confirm the technical necessities of the route. Online categories can also be very advisable for college kids with busy schedules, however provided that they are able to simply get right of entry to the fabrics. It is vital to obviously perceive what the technical necessities are. So, ahead of the route begins or as quickly thereafter as conceivable, youll want to test that your pc will paintings with the entire online equipment, and that you understand how to navigate them. This will be sure that you dont must spend time all the way through the route attempting to determine the generation.

three. Create a time table and stick with it. Quality online instructors create classes which might be clean to navigate and feature transparent expectancies. Having that roughly easytodealwith framework in position will make learning and succeeding that a lot more straightforward. However, although the framework and necessities of your category arent as transparent, youll create a time table and construction, which is able to very much fortify your probabilities of luck within the route. Using equipment equivalent to Google Calendar is a good way to start out. Knowing how your weeks and months glance and scheduling blocks of analysis time for each and every activity or module will will let you stick with a time table.

four. Ask questionsall the time. When you dont perceive, ask questions. When you do perceive, ask additional questions. Instructors recognize scholars who take part, and if theres a participation or dialogue part a part of the grade, then asking high quality questions is helping guarantee your grade on this space. Even if there isnt a participation part, its all the time helpful to invite inquiries to remember to perceive the fabric and are transparent on what is needed of you.

five. Be arrangedand keep arranged. Students whore taking conventional, campusbased classes most often have a constant time table to observe each and every week, through which study room instruction is adopted through assignments out of doors the category. However, for online classes, scholars will have to search out their very own techniques to stick on most sensible in their paintings. It is crucial that you just be arranged from the start of the semester with the intention to achieve success in an internet route. For instance mark task due dates on your calendar, discover a submitting machine for each online subject material and bodily subject material that is helping you stay monitor of the whole lot simply, and shed light on find out about schedules that duvet sections of the route one by one so youve got an arranged tactic to protecting the semesters subject material as you pass alongside.

  1. Have a blank, quiet, and constant workspace. One factor online and inclass classes have in not unusual is that scholars all the time want a spot to review or whole assignments this is blank, quiet, and constant. You can select the place that is for youwhether or not its at a espresso store, a college library, a devoted place of business, or at house. Wherever you select to review and whole assignments, you must make it a constant location that doesnt have out of doors distractions. It is basically key that where is quiet and lets you focal point in your paintings with out distractions.
  2. Do no longer procrastinate. Successful distance freshmen hardly procrastinate. They dont do away with assignments or wait till the final second to write down their papers. Successful online scholars experience freedoms that come with operating at their very own tempo and the facility to finish their paintings in as a lot time because it takes them. On the opposite hand, they know that finishing their assignments is best performed early and on time cramming merely doesnt paintings, and it doesnt will let you retain knowledge longterm. Get began early on getting a success.

eight. Work in your studying comprehension. Successful distance freshmen generally tend to have just right studying comprehension abilities. Most conventional, campusbased scholars concentrate to lectures and take notes, and a few online classes additionally require this. However, the vast majority of distance freshmen are anticipated to grasp subject material thru a large amount of studying. Although far finding out classes be offering video recordings and audio clips, maximum systems require scholars to hide and grasp a considerable amount of written knowledge. If it is a problem for you, it could be very useful to first sign up in a studying comprehension route there are lots of assets online that will help you do that. This ability by myself could make a huge distinction on your luck.

nine. Establish and admire routines that be just right for you. If, for instance, youre employed best within the morning or in brief bursts, then set find out about routines that can help you find out about within the prelunch hours when your mind is contemporary. If, then again, you do best through learning at evening or at the weekends when youll devote nightowl hours or longer blocks in your learning, then make it some degree to take action. Consider how and whilst you paintings best, and enforce a find out about plan that respects the routines that be just right for you.

  1. Connect together with your friends. Establishing sturdy connections with friends and professors is a very powerful facet of tutorial luck, in addition to skilled development. One of essentially the most rewarding reports in schooling is finding out thru collaboration. Forming significant relationships together with your friends and professors can can help you be told extra, keep motivated, and feature an outlet to specific your personal working out of subject material. So, keep attached thru message forums, chat rooms, e mail, and different digital assets. And take note lots of the other people you meet in faculty shall be conceivable process assets down the road so determine connections and keep in contact

Florida National University gives a wealth of tutorial and professional online classes. Check out the entire choicesyour long run is ready