The Lutyens Trust

Exhibition at the British Council, New Delhi
October 2007

Exhibition Concept: “Rashtrapati Bhavan in Context” - The Work of Sir Edwin Lutyens O.M.

BP India was pleased to have sponsored the exhibition

Aim

The evolution of Lutyens’s early work and its impact on the design of Rashtrapati Bhavan was the subject of this exhibition.

Lutyens’s early work in the 1890s was influenced by the Arts and Crafts theories of the time which sought to emulate, in a creative way, the architecture and craftsmanship of vernacular buildings.

Later, in the early 1900s, he made a shift from the looseness of planning and design in his early houses to the discipline – and logic – of classical architecture. By this time he was regarded as the leading architect of country houses in England, but he longed for the opportunity to design a great metropolitan building. Then, in 1906, the commission to design the Central Square at the Hampstead Garden Suburb in London, followed by the British School at Rome, led to his appointment in 1912 to the Delhi Planning Committee.

Rashtrapati Bhavan was the climax of his work and occupied him for several months each year from 1912 to its completion in 1931. The abstraction of the design also influenced his later buildings and monuments in England and France.

At Rashtrapati Bhavan, Lutyens incorporated Indian features and used local building materials in the same manner as he had drawn upon the craftsmanship and style of older buildings in England. Similarly his work in Delhi is brilliantly crafted by Indian workmen using traditional skills.

Lutyens is a great British architect. His real historical significance arises from the contribution his work in Delhi has made to India’s enormously rich and varied cultural heritage. The organizers hope that the exhibition will contribute to a greater understanding of the importance of New Delhi as a heritage site of international significance.

Focus

Lutyens as an architect

By the 1900s Lutyens’s belief in a discipline of order and proportion was an absolute. At the same time he always tried to incorporate into the classical style the characteristically Arts and Crafts preoccupation with the use of local materials. When Lutyens first went to Delhi in 1912, his initial impressions of Indian architecture were critical as he found it hard to think of adapting the essentially decorative nature of Indian buildings to his beliefs in constructional logic and proportion. Later, when he had read widely and travelled in India, he was able to produce his final design for Rashtrapati Bhavan. From Indian architecture he selected features which suited his beliefs, many of them from India’s own ‘classical’ age: columns from the Ajanta caves, the dome from the Stupa at Sanchi and the wonderful Ashoka railings. It is surely one of the great buildings of the world.

Lutyens as a planner

New Delhi was much influenced by the planning of other great capital cities, especially Washington and Paris, as well as by the garden city movement in England, which Lutyens had been involved with as a consultant to Raymond Unwin at Hampstead Garden Suburb. He was also an early environmentalist. He showed foresight in creating the substantial green spaces in New Delhi, planted with carefully chosen trees. These act as a green lung for the city and contribute to a climate which is several degrees cooler than in the older parts of Delhi. Great care should be taken to preserve this low density.

Lutyens as a craftsman

All Lutyens’s buildings were superbly built and crafted. It was often said that he managed to get the best out of his builders and craftsmen; he was happiest on site, handling materials, and his hands were always rather grubby. The experience of building so many houses in his early years prepared him for the precise stone cutting needed for the pink sandstone and cream Dholpur stone at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

In Delhi he took a good deal of trouble in assembling and training the Indian craftsmen who would work on Rashtrapati Bhavan, and had always been enthusiastic for making the building of New Delhi the opportunity for establishing a training centre of building craftsmanship. This vision never materialized.

Structure

The exhibition covered the most important houses of his early period: Munstead Wood, for the gardener Gertrude Jekyll; Orchards; Le Bois des Moutiers at Varengeville in France, for a French Anglophile; Deanery Garden, for Edward Hudson, the proprietor of the magazine Country Life; Little Thakeham and Marsh Court.

Then three buildings of his early ‘Wrenaissance’ phase: the Country Life Offices in London; Heathcote in Yorkshire; and Hestercombe Garden, the forerunner of the garden at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

A single, magical building had a section to itself: Lambay Castle on an island near Dublin.

Then came the important precursors of Rashtrapati Bhavan: Hampstead Garden Suburb; his failed competition design for London County Hall and the British School at Rome.

Then Indian projects: his great unbuilt design for Lucknow University; the Palace for the Nizam of Hyderabad in Delhi, and Lutyens bungalows.

War Memorials followed: The Cenotaph in London, and the All India War Memorial Arch which influenced the form of the great Memorial to the Missing of the Somme in France.

The final two sections were given over to the gardens at Rashtrapati Bhavan, to fountains and monuments in Delhi, and finally to Rashtrapati Bhavan itself, with its drawings and Indian sources.

The photographs and drawings in the exhibition were accompanied by informative text panels.

Venue

British Council, 17 Kasturba Ghandi Marg, New Delhi 110 001

Dates

6th October to 5th November 2007, 10.00am to 6.00pm, except Sundays and holidays

Involved Organisations

The Lutyens Trust, British Council, INTACH, The Government of India, The British High Commission in India

Stupa Sanchi c.150-100 BC & Rashtrapati Bhavan 1912-31