Edwin Lutyens was an ardent follower of the Arts and Crafts movement in England. When commissioned to design Viceroy’s House in New Delhi, the imperial capital, designed to be the jewel in the British Crown, the result was a carefully layered ‘architecture’ patterned with elements that are symbolic of many cultures, diverse aesthetic sensibilities, modernity and tradition, all of which connected time and era. Details of motif and form were meticulously introduced into the larger, bold and imperial architectural schematic.

Viceroy’s House is a wonderful example of that fusion. Here, contrasting styles jostle with one another to create a representative partnership between the West and India. The courtyard, intrinsic to Indian building norms, sadly a forgotten feature in contemporary glass and concrete structures, anchored the ground plan of this grand Viceregal home. Open spaces within and outside the walls of the ‘house’ allowed for the flow of fresh air to permeate the inner sanctums. There was an ongoing and infinite conversation between the inside and the outside, the earth and sky.

In traditional Indian cities and towns, narrow lanes led into walled homes where the main door opened onto a spacious courtyard, open to the sky, around which lay all the living areas. Edwin Lutyens drew his inspiration from this indigenous style but added an encircling verandah, an alien architectural element, which led on to the Mughal Garden, the second skin of imperial Mughal palaces, and connected the sensibility of Shahjehanabad with that of Imperial Britain, as well as fused the temporal statement with the secular.

High ceilings and imposing pillars, alien to India, were embellished with paintings, sculptures and textiles that were Indian. The pillars were crowned with four carved bells – and christened the Delhi Order. For Buddhists, Hindus and Christians, bells are used to dispel bad omens with their resonance. All faiths come together around this motif.

Surface painting was another such introduction that endorsed the language of an Indian aesthetic. Across the country, women paint the outer walls of their mud plastered homes with images that tell local stories of myth and legend – Madhubani in Bihar, and Worli in Mumbai being the better known among the many regional styles. In Kutch, the ceilings of the huts are elaborately embellished. In Shekhavati, Rajasthan, the outer walls of the havelis, mansions of the mercantile community, were painted.

 

The Mughals and Rajputs were masters at fine surface painting that covered the inner walls of their imposing palaces. In Europe, a similar tradition was in vogue where a specially woven brocade fabric was used to mask the walls. Lutyens employed this tradition across Viceroy’s House in Delhi. Vaulted ceilings above long connecting corridors with gilded, golden calligraphy; others have religious scenes from the Hindu pantheon; and in one room there is a contemporary rendering of a map showing the travel path between India and Britain. The ‘modern’ enters the ‘Indian’ and becomes a new idiom for a new century.

Another activity that women across India ritually perform every morning, and at festival time, is the crafting of rangoli on the doorstep of their homes to sanctify the domain and propitiate the Gods to keep the evil eye at bay. An architect once explained to me that the patterns are infinite. At Viceroy’s House, Lutyens embedded the floors with patterns in contrasting coloured stone, some in sweeping, bold and dramatic strokes, and others more jewel-like and intricate. Once again, he used an idiom and motif that was inherently local to create stunning inlay work in contemporary floor designs.

 

In the days of purdah, when women were not permitted to meet men in public areas and spaces, palaces in particular had upper balconies from where the happenings in the Durbar Hall and suchlike, could be seen from behind the veil, as it were. In the Ballroom of the Viceroy’s House, there is an upper balcony, overlooking the Ballroom. Here too, the ceiling has a painting affixed to it and the sides are surface painted with an Indian procession of elephants and palanquins.

Jaalis, stone trelliswork, beautifully crafted, allow for dappled light and air to enter the interiors of the building, casting tactile, mobile patterns on the walls and floors. The Mughals used the element of the jaali for the same reason, imperative to keep the cool during the nine long and hot months that envelop North India.

Water bodies in the inside courtyards, one with a spout that is a snake, and a number of fountains, keep the interiors cool and energize a sense of calm. Chajjas with a carved lotus pattern, hang over the windows, establishing the partnership of yet another traditional element, plucked out from the manual of traditional Indian architecture. The stone railing from Sanchi was the motif of the band that is wrapped around the base of the primary dome. Sculpted, ornately carved, life-size stone elephants stand guard at the outer gates. Imperial lions counter them. Formal imperial avenues link traditional gardens.

One can see all the obvious influences picked out of the rubble and scattered remains of the past that Lutyens brought into play as he created this imperial edifice, statement of Empire, that had the many metaphors of multiple dynasties, and the iconic symbols of a complex and layered civilization. Here, contemporary western influences are in conversation with traditional architectural elements in the design of Viceroy’s House in New Delhi.

 

The residential homes that were built for those who served in government were bungalows and not havelis, a move away from local patterns and structures. Large verandahs, some pillared, were distinct spaces at the entrance of the homes and spacious lawns encircled the residences, another element from England and the West – looking out rather than in, around a common enclosed courtyard. In India, communities lived in clusters, narrow winding lanes connecting homesteads. Living was tactile and inclusive. Imperial Delhi was grand in its layout with broad avenues converging around a rotary; houses were set deep inside a garden, walled in and hedged away, often not visible from the road. No sense of ‘community’ – it was individualistic and separate.

That ‘modernism’ invaded the Indian nation state, inaugurated in August 1947, and with Corbusier and the building of Chandigarh, infused with his sensibility, with the introduction of concrete as a primary building material, modern Indian architecture abandoned the traditional for a ‘modernism’ that stood alien, uncomfortable and isolated from its inherent cultural needs. It also remained untested in a rough and oppressive climate where hot weather overshadowed the few pleasant months of winter, particularly in the plains of North India.

Carefully ventilated spaces of traditional architecture had given way to cement hot cases. Public Works Departments cloned the ‘modernism’ of Corbusier, but unthinkingly, without calibration, and created public housing that was unlivable and ugly, divorced from the fine and varying aesthetic sensibilities that were alive, but sadly suppressed, across the subcontinent. Concrete and glass do not breathe; mud, wood and brick do. We had forgotten. Fine styles imploded. A strange hybrid was born that had no organic connect whatsoever with the people who lived in those new structures. Living chaos prevailed. Cities and towns became virtual slums, alien living domains. Familiar environmentally friendly fundamentals had been demolished for a ‘modern’ way of life and living that was awkward, uncomfortable and unaesthetic.

Urban India is a mess because of this unthinking cloning of a ‘modernism’ that was superimposed on the people by the state. These new structures required more electricity, more cooling, access to more water, more of all infrastructure that was forever in short supply, inadequate and failing. There was no conversation between the traditional and the modern. Therefore, because there was no organic blending of the two, it led to a ‘modernism’ in India that has not delivered what it did effectively in other parts of the world over the last century. Modernism in Europe was the harbinger of change. It led a design revolution with new ideas, shapes and forms, motifs and imagery, colour and material, texture, light and shade. It enhanced the existing essence, the fundamentals.

In India it was never comprehended, only cloned, which resulted in an aesthetic confusion with rough edges. Maybe now, a century later, through an Indian eye, a modernist style could evolve that would be comfortable in its own skin, one that is not cloning what it does not recognize, nor understand.