Professor Mansinh Rana becomes a Patron of The Lutyens Trust

We welcome Professor Rana to his new position in the Lutyens Trust.

Professor Mansinh Rana was one of the first Indian architects to appreciate the value of Lutyens’s work in India. Many English visitors to Rashtrapati Bhavan (Viceroy’s House) owe a debt to Professor Rana, who has provided access to the president’s residence, which is not normally open to visitors, and done so much to ensure that their visit to Delhi was stimulating and enjoyable.

For many years Professor Rana was Government Chief Architect, charged with the upkeep of Rashtrapati Bhavan. How fortunate that Lutyens’s masterpiece should have been entrusted to the supervision of a fellow architect who appreciated his work; it means the building has been remarkably well conserved. The current chief architect, Mr Duggal, was a pupil of Professor Rana, and he shared his former teacher’s enthusiasm for Lutyens and his work.

Professor Rana trained in America under Frank Lloyd Wright, and he was had a distinguished career as an architect and town planner spanning four decades. He is one of the few Indian architects who have followed in Lutyens’s footsteps. The most important thing that Lutyens gave India, he believes, was the garden city of New Delhi. In Delhi, the summer lasts for nine months of the year, and the leafy trees that Lutyens planted along the wide avenues of his new city provide precious shade from the remorseless heat. Not one of Lutyens’s trees has needed to be removed, says the Professor, even though increased traffic has forced the roads to be widened three times. He compares Lutyens’s foresightful planning with the nightmarish city of ‘hot-boxes’ or multi storeyed buildings which the Delhi authorities have woven around New Delhi.

Professor Rana has himself designed important urban landscapes, such as the Buddha Jayanti Park in New Delhi, 300 acres of wooded park which he landscaped in 1956 in memory of Lord Buddha. He also designed parks at Vijay Ghat and Shanti Van, in memory of Jawaharlal Nehru. He built the Nehru Memorial Library. Since 1989 he has served as Dean of the Sushant School of Architecture and he is visiting Professor at the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi.

Professor Rana is an energetic traveller and frequent visitor to England, where he has seen many of Lutyens’s buildings. In India he has done much to keep alive the spirit of Lutyens’s work, which he sees as being peculiarly fitted to the needs of the climate and environment. He is a wonderful patron for the Trust to have, and the Trust is delighted that he has agreed to serve.