An Innocent Abroad: Joseph Stein in India

IICoCCASIonAl PublICAtIon 18

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Stein was both an interesting man and a complicated one

It is an honour to speak about Joseph Allen Stein while standing in this sublime example of his work. this talk is a collection of

thoughts from a work in progress, and I should point out that there are many people in Delhi, and even in this room, who worked with Joe and knew Joe much better than I ever did, having only met him briefly in the united States. their memories, shared with me over the past year-and-a-half, make up a large part of today’s presentation.1 I would like to acknowledge the generous financial support of the Clarence Stein Institute at Cornell university,2

which has funded my research in India.

An enjoyable part of this project over the past couple of years has been meeting people and talking about Joe, what his architecture means to them and what his legacy means to India. the question today is: who was Joseph Stein – after whom was named the street just to our right as we sit here in the India International Centre (IIC) , and the architect of both the IIC and the India Habitat Centre, which outlook magazine ranked number one and number two on the list of the best buildings in Delhi three years ago.

Stein was both an interesting man and a complicated one and, as those of you who

1 Among those who graciously consented to be interviewed for my research are: J.R. bhalla, Sudeshna Chatterjee, Prem Chaudhary, Anurag Chowfla, Madhavi Desai, Miki Desai, Minakshi Devi, Sumit Ghosh, Pankaj Gupta, P.C. Jain, Ravi Kaimal, bharat and Gabo Kapur, Ashok b. lall, Kanai lal, R.M.S. liberhan, Meena Mani, unkar Matu, A.G.K. Menon, Snehanshu Mukerjee, Ram Rahman, Mansingh Rana, K.t. Ravindran, Jagan Shah, Pritpal Singh, nalini thakur, Ravindra J. Vasavada, and Sudhir Vohra. I am especially grateful to Joseph Stein’s sons, Ethan and David, for their generosity in sharing both memories and documents, as well as suggestions and comments, and in sum, making this project possible. Still, any errors are mine alone.

2 the Institute funds research into the planning and architecture of Clarence Stein, and into the work of others whose ideas were influenced by his writings and practice.

An Innocent Abroad: Joseph Stein in India

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are familiar with Stephen White’s remarkable tome on Stein, building in the Garden (oxford) know, it is hard to do justice to the architect even in 300-400 pages.3

Joseph Stein was born in 1912, in omaha, nebraska, and spent some of his early years on a farm that was equidistant from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, really in the middle of the American agricultural heartland. He grew up in an orthodox Jewish family and escaped that life when he was 16 years old. He went on to the university of Illinois to study architecture and then proceeded to have a series of fascinating architectural experiences in the 1920s and ’30s. He undertook his masters in architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, an important institution focused on modern design where, among others, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, Florence Knoll, and sculptor Carl Milles taught. Stein then attended a brief programme at the Ecole des beaux-Arts in Fontainebleau after which he moved to new York City to work for Ely Jacques Kahn, another Jewish architect who was just beginning to build his own important practice around that time.

In 1939, Joe left new York and moved to California to work for Richard neutra, and that started his career as a modern architect. His heroes at that point were louis Sullivan and Frank lloyd Wright, who was Sullivan’s student and apprentice. In los Angeles, Joe had an opportunity to experience personally contemporary works of Wright and other major architects, such as Rudolph Schindler, and these influences

show up in Joe’s works.

After a few years, Stein established a small practice in los Angeles with Gregory Ain, another former employee of Richard neutra’s who would become an important figure in modern architecture in his own right. later Joe would recall that he and Ain didn’t actually do a lot of architecture – they mostly talked about politics. Gregory Ain was quite left wing, Joe leant that way too, and the times being what they were, at the end of the Depression and with war developing in Europe, there was considerable political ferment. Still, there were a number of interesting houses that came out of their partnership.

3 Much of the background information used in this talk comes from building in the Garden, by Stephen White, oxford university Press, 1993; still the definitive work on Joseph Stein.

In 1939, Joe left New York

and moved to California to

work for Richard Neutra, and that

started his career as a modern

architect

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When the u.S. became embroiled in the Second World War, Joe moved to northern California, to the San Francisco bay Area, where he did some work on his own but also teamed up with another architect named John Funk. It was then that Joe began to establish his own architectural language, which was a version of bay Area regional modernism. Even though bay Area architects in the early ’40s were focused primarily on projects such as housing associated with the war, they were also developing a regional modernism that was particular to the character of place, and concerned with understanding and protecting the environment. Joe belonged to a group called ‘telesis’, an early environmental planning organization modelled on the Regional Plan Association of America, formed some years earlier on the east coast of the united States, and his work explored the interaction between landscape and building that was a strong tradition in the bay Area dating back to the 1920s and pioneering regionalists such as William Wurster.

the houses that Joe designed for his own family (which included his wife, Margaret, and sons David and Ethan) and for the landscape architect, Robert Royston, both of which were landscaped by Royston, were emblematic of his work at that time: modest in scale, open to and partaking of their surroundings, simple in form, embellished by the use of natural materials. they are located in Marin County, just north of San Francisco.

the high point of Joe’s career in the bay Area was being selected along with John Funk to design a project called ladera, a suburban development based on progressive planning models. this was at the end of the 1940s, after the war, at a time of substantial population growth in the region, in large part from returning soldiers who had moved to the benign climate, beautiful setting and rich educational and employment opportunities of the bay Area. ladera was modelled on the work of Clarence Stein (no relation), an important planner of the first part of the twentieth century, whose designs for communities such as Radburn, new Jersey, not only informed Joe and his colleagues, but also the

The high point of Joe’s career in the Bay Area was being selected along with John Funk to design a project called Ladera, a suburban development based on progressive planning models

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1950s planners of Delhi, especially Albert Mayer.4 the architects were joined on the project by Garett Eckbo and Robert Royston, of the firm Eckbo, Dean, Royston and Williams, which was destined to became one of the most important landscape architecture firms in the united States. they later worked with Joe on the redesign of the lodi Gardens in Delhi, among other projects.

the team designed the community, but construction stalled because banks could not get federal financing, as was customary and necessary for that scale of project. the reason was that ladera was racially integrated, and the united States government would not loan money to such projects. the project essentially ground to a halt, except for some privately financed homes. the bitterness of that experience, combined with

anguish about the concurrent resurgence of the McCarthy hearings and the blacklist against communists and other left-wing figures that swept up people as diverse as Gregory Ain and Frank Sinatra, made the situation so ethically and economically intolerable for the Steins that in 1950 Joe and Margaret decided to leave the united States with their two young boys.

there are various versions of this story. one is very dramatic: it describes a hasty night-time departure, complete with a dog left behind in the house. that is probably apocryphal, but it does seem true that Margaret was the primary force behind the departure, basically refusing to raise their children in such a regressive political and social environment. the family went first to Mexico, believing it to be more progressive and that Joe would have the opportunity to do housing and other socially conscious architectural projects. It didn’t happen, although they did establish a friendship there with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. the Steins then moved to Europe, spending time in both Switzerland and Italy.

then, in 1952, Joe received a call from Vijayalakshmi nehru Pandit, Prime Minister nehru’s sister, who was just stepping down from her post as ambassador to the united States and Mexico, while continuing

4 For an analysis of the impact of Stein and the RPAA on Delhi’s Master Plan, see Pirate Modernity: Delhi’s Media urbanism, Ravi Sundaram, Routledge, 2010, pp 40-41.

Then, in 1952, Joe received

a call from Vijayalakshmi Nehru Pandit,

Prime Minister Nehru’s sister,

who was just stepping down

from her post as ambassador to

the United States and Mexico,

while continuing to head the

Indian delegation to the United

Nations

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to head the Indian delegation to the united nations. She invited Joe to come to India to establish a new Department of Architecture and Planning at the West bengal Engineering College. the call apparently came as a result of a referral from Richard neutra. A few months later, at the age of forty, Joe arrived in India, probably expecting a relatively short stay. He was to live in India for 49 years, until shortly before his death in 2001.

When the Steins arrived in Calcutta, they found an exciting and dramatically different environment from anything they had known before. Joe often reminisced about those first impressions, as did his children. It was a heady time for this American family, being in this mysterious place where the children could go down to the river to watch the elephants push the teak logs around, the parents could walk in the gardens around the ‘world’s largest tree’, and all were witness to a new country being formed. Joe taught at the College for three years. Perhaps that was all the academic institutional bureaucracy he could take. While he was there, however, his students constructed a demonstration project in low-cost affordable housing that was visited by nehru. Whether as a result of this encounter or for other reasons, Joseph Stein was soon engaged as one of foreign architects and planners adopted by nehru to work on buildings and town for modern India, along with otto Königsberger, who laid out bhubaneswar, and Albert Mayer, who worked on Delhi and Chandigarh, later joined by le Corbusier, Fry, Drew and Jeanneret.

After Calcutta, the family moved to new Delhi. At the same time, Joe joined up with another expatriate American architect, benjamin Polk, who had a similar path to Joe’s – born in the American Midwest, practising in San Francisco, and then moving to India in 1952 – and a bengali engineer, binoy K. Chatterjee, to establish Stein-Polk-Chatterjee. Among other projects, they planned factory towns in the steel region of orissa and West bengal. one of them was Durgapur in which one can clearly see planning ideas from both ladera and Radburn in the scheme. the firm also designed communities in Rourkela and Jamshedpur. It was apparently a very mixed experience for Joe. on the one hand he understood the importance of what he was doing and he saw the opportunity to do progressive town planning; on the other, he also saw what the impact of steel towns going into rural India was doing to the local population and to the environment of the place.

A few months later, at the age of forty, Joe arrived in India, probably expecting a relatively short stay

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When Stein arrived in Delhi in 1955 there were less than two million residents. the city was divided into the dense, historic neighbourhood of Shahjahanabad; a much more sparsely settled, and greener, new city, new Delhi; and burgeoning settlements scattered to the south, west and north, many housing displaced Punjabis forced southward by Partition. Joe moved into an apartment in Chanakyapuri, in what was essentially a garden city filled with monuments from Mughal to british times. the city was very different from Calcutta, yet, strikingly, not that different from the modernist planning tradition to which Joe belonged. After all, his friend Albert Mayer was in the process of developing the first Master Plan for Delhi, and the british garden-city movement, which had spawned new Delhi, had also inspired his own work in ladera and West bengal.

In 1957, a young widow, Mrs. Sundari K. Shridharani asked Joe to design an arts centre, the triveni Kala Sangam. A beautiful building, it was apparently Joe’s favourite of his own projects. tKS is a simple composition of a tall slab and a lower wing set at ninety degrees from each other, forming a courtyard that also houses an amphitheatre. the courtyard extends as a vertical garden climbing the side of the taller structure, which is lined with outdoor corridors screened by jaalis. the vertical garden was a part of the total landscape concept that he borrowed from his old colleagues, Eckbo, Royston, Dean & Williams; but also I am tempted to say it is a vision not so dissimilar to what one sees wandering the streets of Calcutta, where plants grow on the facades of almost every building. the interiors of the tKS, the proportions of the spaces and their character, are serene and moving. the building exudes a sense of calm repose.

It is like a temple, or reminiscent of the Salk Institute by louis Kahn in its order and sense of presence. one of the interesting architectural features of the building is the texture on the concrete walls lining the hallways. the striated effect is the consequence of preparing the concrete walls for painting – because they were relatively rough, they had to be skim-coated with plaster applied using a steel trowel, the white plaster providing a light-coloured base for the paint. this treatment was meant to be covered, but when Joe saw the beautiful patterns created by the surface prep work, he cancelled the painting contract and kept it in this kind of intermediate state that actually looks completely finished. this notion of texture, and texture arising from and built into the architecture itself, forms an important component of Stein’s work.

In 1957, a

young widow,

Mrs. Sundari

K. Shridharani

asked Joe to

design an arts

centre, the

Triveni Kala

Sangam

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triveni Kala Sangam, Delhi. Corridors and vertical garden. Photo: Jeffrey M. Chusid

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In the early 1960s, my father visited India as part of a cultural exchange programme and was taken to see the triveni Kala Sangam. He was struck by the building and its clear connections to the architecture of los Angeles, where we had recently lived, and so asked if the architect was an American. His tour guide responded, ‘no, he’s Indian.’

‘oh, what’s his name?’ my father asked.

‘Joseph Stein,’ he was told, the name pronounced with a rising sound on the second syllable, as if it were completely Indian. When my father told me that story, after my first visit to India, it demonstrated perfectly the answer to one of the questions I had coming into this whole project, which is how Joe Stein was viewed by his adopted homeland. And, clearly, he was well accepted.

the Gandhi bhavan at Delhi university is a product of the same period as the tKS. there are at least two formal ideas that the Gandhi bhavan explored. one of them was the use of local stone as an exposed finish material: Joe began developing a polygonal-coursed masonry, in part influenced by lodi and Mughal construction practices, as revealed by the partial ruins of tombs around Delhi, and in part by the idea that a local stone gave the architecture a sense of place, being something that could create texture and shadow and character and still be indigenous. With the High Commissioner’s residence and Chancery for Australia, this use of stone was firmly established as a character-defining feature of Joe’s work. there is an engaging story told about the challenge of this particular technique, which demanded beautiful

stones, carefully placed, and not covered with another material. At the end of the first day of laying stones, the contractor had managed to get a fair amount of the mortar used between the stones onto the face of the granite, and he couldn’t get it off. So Joe called a meeting with the Australian owner’s representative, the contractor and the superintendent of the project. the Australian said, ‘let me try and see if I can do something about it.’ the next day he called and said, ‘no problem; using a wire brush and some elbow grease (hard work), I was able to get all the mortar off.’ the contractor immediately submitted a changed order to purchase ‘elbow grease’!

the India Joe encountered at this time in the early 1960s was, in his

The Gandhi Bhavan at Delhi

University is a product of the

same period as the TKS. There are at least two

formal ideas that the Gandhi

Bhavan explored

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view, in an ideal situation in terms of construction. on the one hand it still had most of its traditional building crafts in place, with numerous skilled practitioners available and, on the other hand, the country had begun to access modern technology and modern materials such as concrete and steel through trade and industrialization. the combination provided architectural opportunities that he thought were available almost nowhere else. Joe was intensely interested in designing in a way to exploit these advantages – in particular the craft and traditions that he thought were so important. this was a part of his own experience working in the bay Area of northern California, where developing a locally appropriate modernism was central to the ethos of so many practising in the middle of the twentieth century. Joe’s Indian buildings from the 1950s, and early ’60s are, as it turns out, the best built of his career because those crafts were in place, and because he played such a personal role in assembling the teams and directing the construction. unfortunately, by the end of the 1960s many craftsmen had left to be guest workers in Europe and after that in the Gulf, while the building industry in India itself became more corporate, industrialized and corrupt.

the other architectonic interest seen in the Gandhi bhavan was the use of a dome as a long-span structure. For the rest of his career, Joe would explore lightweight strategies for easily, economically, and attractively covering a large volume of space. Starting around 1960, Joe became the architect for the Escorts factories in the suburbs of Delhi, an involvement that would continue for decades; those projects saw most of his structural innovations. this was not just a modernist infatuation with structure – although those familiar with the work of buckminster Fuller or Frank lloyd Wright know how much American modernists relied on structure and other tectonic innovations to address social and architectural dilemmas. For Joe, these lightweight, long-span structures could provide a better work environment than had been previously available, one that was light, airy and comfortable. He succeeded at doing exactly that, and Escorts employed him for decades.

Eventually, his work for Escorts came to the attention of the Indian army. Representatives visited the Escorts factories to investigate using some of the techniques or the possibility of hiring Joe himself to design hangars or similar

The other architectonic interest seen in the Gandhi Bhavan was the use of a dome as a long-span structure

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Escorts Factory, Faridabad. Stein’s interest in lightweight, long-span structure resulted in significant improvements in working conditions. Courtesy: Joseph Allen Stein Archive

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American School, Delhi. Rendering of pods and gymnasium, integrating buildings into the natural site. Courtesy: Joseph Allen Stein Archive

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buildings. After their tour, the officers asked how much the buildings cost, and when they were told the actual figures, they were alleged to have jumped up from the table with great irritation and said, ‘that’s a lie, that can’t possibly be true, you can’t build for anything less than three times what you are telling us.’ And they walked out.

Another important early project was the American school in Chanakyapuri. Here the concern was not just structure or materials but the landscape: how to build while preserving, or even celebrating, a site’s natural forms and vegetation. the round forms of buildings related to the hills and views, not just to the programme of classrooms and meeting spaces. the project avoided levelling the site, or removing the wonderful rocks that dominated the gently rolling landscape. Rather, the stone being used in the building was meant to relate to outcroppings of the same stone around the site. unfortunately, only one of the original round teaching pods exists today.

the first group of children who attended the school, including Joe’s two boys, planted the eucalyptus still swaying over the site. the gymnasium was eventually converted into an auditorium. the school has undertaken numerous other changes thanks to its popularity and success. Part of the problem with Joe’s legacy is that he tended to do buildings for institutions whose subsequent success, often in large part a result of his efforts, put considerable pressure on the buildings. [the India International Centre is a prime example.] Still, it is possible to see the way in which Joe began to develop both a site-specific language for the schools and a kind of prototype for

education. In this he was doing something very similar to what his mentor, Richard neutra, was achieving back in the united States at the same time, designing new schools in California in partnership with Robert Alexander.

At the southern edge of their new capital, the british established a park by clearing out from around an area of historic tombs and other structures one of the many old villages that remained around Delhi. the resulting garden was called lady Willingdon Park after the wife of the Viceroy. Since Independence, the park has been called the lodi Gardens; today it is at the heart of ‘Steinabad’. this was the place

The first group of children who

attended the school, including

Joe’s two boys, planted the

eucalyptus still swaying over the

site

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where Joe, among others, spent a great deal of time. bungalows bordered lodi Gardens in the early ’60s, and it was in one area where some of those iconic structures were intermixed with public works department workshops that the India International Centre was established.

When Joe received the commission for the IIC, it was planned for where the inter-state bus terminal is today, north of new Delhi. Joe was unhappy with the site, and so he looked around, and in consultation with some others, picked this area. At first Joe was very hesitant about selecting a portion of the lodi Gardens for the project, but his friend Albert Mayer said, ‘If you think that is the right place to make it happen, then pick it.’ He did, and then made the case to C. D. Deshmukh, who agreed. Joe then asked Jawaharlal nehru, who, although (or perhaps, because) he was in the middle of a bitter political battle at the time with Deshmukh, not only agreed that this was the right site, but actually doubled the amount of land at Joe’s disposal for the project. the unused portion later became the site for the Ford Foundation. before giving his approval, nehru sought the advice of Mansingh Rana, then the young chief architect of Delhi and a former apprentice of Frank lloyd Wright. Rana strongly supported the idea, so Joe began the process of translating the spirit of the lodi architecture into the sympathetic set of buildings that would line the northern edge of the gardens. the impact of the forms and materials of the tombs on the modern architecture is clearly visible, but the quotation is not literal. the IIC functions as a modern building, but it has the presence of the ancient buildings and monuments in the garden. the negative space – the space in between the buildings, the landscape – was just as important to Joe as the buildings themselves. While it may be difficult to see this today because of all the security walls, fences and gates in the area, Joe’s buildings were meant to sit in the lodi Gardens in the same way as did the tombs and mosque complexes, and to be equally accessible.

the water bodies in the original drawing of the IIC wind all the way around the complex, almost to Max Mueller Marg. today, the water only remains in the small pond in front, and the larger one by the dining hall. there have been other changes as well, some controversial. but the basic ideas were simple: an elevated bar of housing with jaalis protecting the rooms from the sun, situated in a garden, and

The water bodies in this original drawing of the IIC wind all the way around the complex, almost to Max Mueller Marg

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Water was an important element of the landscape stein designed for the IIC forom early in the design process. At one point he drew ponds enclosing the complex on the two sides.Photo: Jeffrey M. Chusid

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with the building’s ornamentation firmly linked to its mode of construction. In this, Joe was essentially returning to the notion of the organic architecture of Wright and Sullivan. ornament came from the pattern of the stone, the wood-grained pattern of the board-formed, fair-faced (not painted) concrete, and panels of a washed pebble aggregate, a feature that Joe introduced into Indian architecture. Although in this building the pebbles had to be hand-placed, later he figured out a way to place them into the concrete in the forms.

Even though the building is based on monumental forms and has monuments as neighbours, it has a kind of informal, casual feel about it. At the same time, there is a very strong order to the structure, and to the geometries, that allows the IIC to incorporate many diverse elements as needed, whether folding metal windows, or coloured tile-work, or floating roof vaults.5

It appears that the Golconde Guest House by Antonin Raymond and George nakashima in Pondicherry was one model for this building. Certainly, the IIC shares with Golconde some formal language of a concrete frame, screens, rigorous geometries and a vaulted roof, as well as the idea that the main building floats above the landscape.

the jaalis were not only functional, some were an attempt to revitalize or keep alive a Punjabi tile tradition, others an experiment in using modern materials to recall traditional construction. both are a bit of a test in conservation. the detail of these custom-made bricks strung on a steel cable system is beautiful and tricky. Another example of integrating traditional craft with modern construction can be seen in the

concrete roofs of the auditorium and dining spaces. traditional labour worked with modernist forms and sophisticated engineering to put everything together, while Joe’s vision made each element, whether an example of Indian craft or international-style modernism, seem harmonious. the corridor of the hostel wing originally did not have the fibreglass covering the screens. but one can still feel a kind of poetry of space and form and proportion, reinforced by the tapered, cantilevered ribs that form the ceiling of the curved corridor.

5 See a thesis by nikhil Joshi, ‘Design Philosophy of Joseph Allen Stein and the Influence of his Architecture, School of Planning and Architecture’, 2001, for an excellent analysis of Stein’s use of geometry and proportion.

The detail of these custom-

made bricks strung on a steel

cable system is beautiful and

tricky

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the screen walls at the Indian International Centre reinterpret a traditional architectural feature with new materials and technology.Photo: Jeffrey M. Chusid

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the Ford Foundation was designed for the site next door to the India International Centre. the drawings again show how important the monuments of the nearby lodi gardens were to the modern buildings. Here too, the ancient gardens extend throughout the modernist vision. the use of the local granite set into rows of polygonal masonry continues. one problem with that stone was that it could contain high amounts of iron oxide. In fact, the pool that sits right outside the front door of the IIC was dug during construction to test the rock for excessive iron before it was put in the buildings, by soaking the stones and discarding those that showed too much rust. However, iron still comes out of the stones as they weather. Whether or not it is perceived as a problem depends on the eye of the beholder.

only a few years after the India International Centre was completed, there was already a marked deterioration in the quality of construction. this was especially visible in the concrete. In between the building of IIC and the Ford Foundation, the laws were changed so potable water could no longer be used in the making of the concrete. this introduced salts and other minerals that made the concrete poorer, which led to damage in the underlying reinforcing steel. the ornament was also now applied to the surface, as opposed to be integral, and so not as durable as at the IIC. but Ford Foundation is still a powerful composition of buildings and gardens, and the spaces inside the buildings are elegantly proportioned and comfortable to inhabit, and make graceful use of wood, metal and fabrics in combination with exposed concrete and a beautiful black, coral and turquoise-coloured terrazzo. Margaret Stein worked on the furnishings and finishes at the Ford Foundation, as she did at several other projects. (She also worked on the landscape design of several of Joe’s projects.)

the lodi Gardens themselves became a project for Joe, and this allowed him to collaborate with his old friend Garrett Eckbo on a place that he loved and was now tightly integrated into his own works, and also to create a place that had the broad

diversity of uses and users that comported with his Gandhian social vision, and that would be seen later in the India Habitat Centre.

Joe’s next major project was the Kennedy School at Aligarh Muslim university. the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations funded this building. It attempts to once again use a modernist form of language that

Joe’s next major project was the Kennedy School at Aligarh Muslim University

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evokes the character, nature, and culture of the institution without being literal. behind the walls, there are double-height classrooms and lecture spaces, with sloping floors, served by semi-circular pavilions with offices; a complex arrangement of spaces that is cleanly resolved by the simplicity of the overall buildings forms. Again, one of the important concerns is the provision of texture; at every scale from the handmade brick to the pattern of the buildings on the site. Every detail has integrity. unfortunately, the university does not have the resources to keep the building in top condition.

A few years later, in the late 1960s, Joe designed one of India’s first high-rise buildings, the Indian Express building in Mumbai, a building that has some subtleties about it that may not be immediately apparent. Even though the tower portion is essentially square in plan, two facades have four bays, while the other two sides have six. this provided greater protection from the low sun to the east and west facades. the Express tower recalls Joe’s time working in the bay Area through its modernist response to climate and local conditions. one of that region’s pioneers was the architect William Wurster, whose wife once said ‘bill, the great thing about your buildings is that they don’t look as expensive as they are.’ one of the things about Joe’s buildings is that they look much simpler than they are. Here is a building that seems to be a box set on a base, but the base is skewed from the tower because of the street grid. the base is also rounded while the tower is angular. the variations on the tower facades, along with the variable relationship between tower and base means the composition is always alive and always changing as one moves around the building. In addition, the surfaces are covered with pieces of broken black and gold tiles that have a texture and richness to them that is totally unexpected, as well as being surprisingly Wrightian and organic. the building bears comparison with the Price tower by Frank lloyd Wright, which also has highly articulated facades, a play between horizontal and vertical, and multiple architectural devices that add interest and fun to the design. the Express building is a subtler version, perhaps, where the projecting edges of the balconies forms a dotted line along each corner of the tower, where there is a three-part pattern for the balcony railing on two facades, two parts to the balcony pattern on the other two facades, and where the stripes of yellow set within the

The Express tower recalls Joe’s time working in the Bay Area through its modernist response to climate and local conditions

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black serve as a playful counterpoint to whatever formality or corporate mentality may be embedded in the high-rise typology.

A few years later, Joe embarked on a project in Hyderabad called ICRISAt, the Institute for Crop Research for the Semi-arid tropics. this complex was designed in loose collaboration with balkrishna Doshi; it was one of two projects done with Doshi that led to the formation of the firm, Stein-Doshi-bhalla. (the other was the Kashmir Convention Centre.) Each man was responsible for part of the complex; Joe designed the academic court, which includes the administrative offices and classrooms, as well as some faculty housing. these buildings are not only visually and spatially rich and interesting to experience, but they are in beautiful shape. that is an exhilarating thing for anybody who is involved with the preservation of modern architecture.

In the interior spaces of ICRISAt is another innovation that Joe introduced to India: exposing the mechanical system and combining it in an attractive, organized way with the exposed structure and lighting. this treatment for the systems was developed with the engineer P. C. Jain, in part to express the fact that the building itself had to be technologically sophisticated and highly reliable because the

institute was engaged with research and with preserving crops and seeds from around the world. beyond the buildings, which include some of Doshi’s best work, the site itself is quite remarkable. there are a few old religious structures, some lovely landscaping, fields of crops, and ponds and streams. Also, quite inadvertently, the expansive site has become a significant nature preserve even as it remains a functioning crop research station. today, ICRISAt is equally proud of its architecture, its scientific mission and the native birds and animals it hosts. Joe would have shared their pride.

Joe’s work at lady Irwin College in new Delhi dates from the 1970s. It repeats the language of smooth concrete roof vaults sitting on a rough base seen in Gandhi bhavan and IIC. Here the base is brick, and the building’s various elements come together to form a courtyard surrounded by walkways at two levels. the building’s materiality and shapes also respond sympathetically to the two generations of brick buildings that existed already on the site.

In the interior spaces of ICRISAT

is another innovation that

Joe introduced to India: exposing the mechanical

system and combining it in

an attractive, organized way

with the exposed structure and

lighting

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Irwin courtyard. Reconstruction of the columns at the lady Irwin School.Photo: Jeffrey M. Chusid

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one of the trickiest jobs in preservation is the conservation of modern architecture. twentieth-century buildings are very different from traditional buildings. they lack redundancy, the systems are often one of a kind and the materials can be fragile. lady Irwin presents an example of the challenge: the columns holding up the second-floor walkways had failed. this was blamed in part on the fact that the building was close to the metro, and a combination of metro construction and earthquake was the proximate cause. but an examination found that the original columns consisted of brick wrapped around a concrete core with two thin pieces of steel bar for vertical reinforcement, which was inadequate to the stresses, wherever they came from. the columns are being reconstructed from new brick that forms a box in the middle of which stands a steel wide-section column. this is quite a different structural system from the original. However, as important as structure is to modern architects, at least this new steel detail will be hidden. More critical is that each of the original bricks was actually chamfered at the top edge, visually reinforcing the mortar joint between the bricks, and the feeling of a handmade rough texture to the column. that texture was, as mentioned earlier, a deliberate contrast to the smoothness of the concrete vaults above. the new brick that is being put in along with the new structural column, however, is machine-made, smooth,

doesn’t have the chamfer, and, as a result, has a narrower mortar joint. this resulting small change substantially impacts the original look of the piers and undercuts Joe’s reason for using the brick.

In the 1970s and the ’80s the Kashmir Convention Centre was one of the major projects in the office. It arose out of planning studies that Doshi and Stein did for communities in Kashmir, and introduces us to another of Joe’s major concerns, which was preserving the Himalayas. by some accounts Joe’s first built project was a guesthouse in the Himalayas, and he subsequently did three projects in bhutan. by 1973, Joe was part of an international organization that was trying to save the Himalayas from inappropriate development and from the kind of rampant growth in the hill towns that we see today; in 1975 he was a member of Air India’s Ecology Conservation Committee, and he continued addressing the mountain landscape for decades. With the conference centre in Srinagar, he was hoping that he could design

By 1973, Joe was part of an international organization

that was trying to save the

Himalayas from inappropriate

development and from the kind of rampant growth in the hill towns

that we see today;

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something that would be ecologically appropriate, what we would call today ‘sustainable’, designed to minimize many of the problems associated with tourism and development in the fragile Dal lake basin. Joe began by imposing a couple of conditions on the client. one of these was not to tear down any of the deodar cedars on the site. He had extensive negotiations on this subject with everybody, contractors up to Sheikh Abdullah, the Chief Minister, and they all assured him the cedars were safe. of course, the first thing that happened when the building was under construction was that the cedars were cut down. Joe also wanted to find a different way to handle the cooling for the building since he disliked cooling towers and at the same time was trying to come up with a less energy-intensive strategy. He and P. C. Jain decided to use Dal lake for cooling, utilizing pipes that ran out a kilometre from shore, three metres below the surface, carrying the warm water from the air conditioning systems in the building to cool in the lake and then returning it chilled to the building. this was an early use of lake-source cooling, which is considered cutting edge even today.

Another story from this project concerns a gift from the contractor, who was very happy with receiving the job and the, probably, inflated fees. He presented Joe with a ring made from gold and precious stones. Joe asked the contractor, ‘How much did this cost?’ and the contractor proudly said, ‘twenty-five lakhs.’ Joe said, ‘I will make a deal with you. I will give you back the ring, I will match your twenty-five lakhs and let’s buy blankets for the workers on the project.’

there are conflicting stories as to how Joe felt about the Conference Centre. the design and construction had been long and difficult. but at the same time, the project helped the office to grow, and funded more research and speculative projects. like all architecture offices, most projects that Stein got weren’t being built, such as small-scale, low-cost housing studies for sites in both India and California. He also started developing mega-structures, almost Arcosanti-scaled projects, for Malaysia and elsewhere. Joe also visited Singapore several times, trying to expand his practice so that it would be more international in scope, and worked on several projects in the united States, in Colorado among other places, although those too were never realized.

Like all architecture offices, most projects that Stein got weren’t being built, such as small-scale, low-cost housing studies for sites in both India and California

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one unbuilt project from this period was the Delhi Cloth Mills. With this effort, Joe had a chance to follow in the footsteps of his hero, Frank lloyd Wright, who had designed a building for the Calico Mills in Ahmedabad in 1945. unfortunately, neither project was realized. both were fascinating, however, in the way that they wove together modernist forms with locally inspired patterns and textures. both would have been true monuments in their hometowns, if built.

Some other interesting projects that were developed in some detail, but never built, include an oberoi hotel, a building for a hi-tech firm in Mumbai, a Sikh temple, and headquarters for the national Cement Institute. but fundamental to this whole process was Joe’s intense engagement with making buildings. Most days began at 4.30 in the morning, with Joe sitting on the balcony of his apartment, sketching details in a notebook. Working things out and solving problems was his favourite activity. He was a firm believer that this level of study was required to make projects work, whether built or un-built. Joe was obsessed by details; he loved them; he cared about them; they were essential to his idea of making successful buildings. this was in great contrast to other architects who relied much more on contractors to work out how a building should be constructed. Some of this debate simmered in the office.

of the two final projects done on a very large scale, from the late 1980s and early ’90s, the first is the technology Hall at Pragati Maidan, with its dizzying Piranesian interior. the second, of course, ‘ecology by design’, is the India Habitat Centre, which was Stein’s largest project and one of the largest buildings constructed in India to that date It is perhaps most successful as a work of urban design, a place that handles transportation and an enormous variety of public and private activities, from housing to banking to entertainment to food. A city within the city, it is an intellectual

shopping centre that provides cheap green curry, great theatre, cutting-edge art, homes for dozens of nGos engaged with the environment and society, and wonderful outdoor spaces that are comfortable even in summer. the IHC has made an extraordinary contribution to the city of Delhi over the past twenty years.

I would like to end with a kind of a ‘what if.’ We know the impact that Corbusier and Jeanneret had on India because of their work

The IHC has made an

extraordinary contribution to

the city of Delhi over the past twenty years

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on Chandigarh, and that people such as Doshi and Prasad, who worked on those projects, then transmitted that kind of rationalist, international style aesthetic to countless more Indian architects. Joe made no secret about the fact that he didn’t think that Chandigarh was particularly successful, although, apparently, there was a picture of the Secretariat hanging in his office. What is fascinating is to think how close the current city came to not happening, or at least, not happening the way it did. the reason is because, as many of us here know, before Corbusier was given the authorization to design Chandigarh, Americans Matthew nowicki and Albert Mayer were in charge of the project. these two were much closer to Joe – in terms of their aesthetic, of their appreciation for regional modernism and the environment, and a soft-edged organic approach to planning – than they were to Corbusier. nowicki and Meyer’s original plan of Chandigarh included more curvilinear streets following the topography, as opposed to the rigid grid of le Corbusier. nowicki’s preliminary sketches for housing in Chandigarh included jaalis and soft brick walls, looking not unlike the IIC, or even lady Irwin College. It is fascinating to speculate that if nowicki hadn’t died in a plane crash and Meyer declined to proceed without him,

then there would be a very different form of modern architecture in India today, and Joe might have been even more central to the modern movement in India than he was.

Sumit Ghosh said, ‘If Kahn taught me the religion of architecture, Stein taught me the liturgy.’ It was Joe who taught him how to detail, how to build and how to realize the vision that he absorbed from Kahn. there is a quote that circulates among some who worked for Joe, the quintessential modest architect: ‘My goal is to make good architecture not great architecture’. In other words, he aspired to an architecture based on co-operation and fellowship, not ego. Whether that is indeed true, or whether some of his buildings have made it to ‘great’, is for each of us to experience and to decide for ourselves. but the way most people describe Joe actually reflects how he was as a human being – he was a humanist, an ‘Earthian’ or Gandhian; he was responsible; he had the highest levels of integrity.

When he was interviewed in the late 1990s, Joe talked about a kind of age of innocence being over, that now India was consumed with

He aspired to an architecture

based on co-operation and

fellowship, not ego. Whether that is indeed true, or

whether some of his buildings

have made it to ‘great’, is for

each of us to experience and

to decide for ourselves

greed.6 of course, to some extent, every generation makes that complaint. Joe sometimes willingly played the role of the innocent in order to be able to do what he needed to do. However, whether we could do today what he did in his lifetime is a fair question; whether we could create the quality of places, maintain the integrity of vision, fight for threatened wild places and the underclass. I am certain we could if we tried.

6 ‘Garden of the Heart: A Film on Architect Joseph Allen Stein’. An Initiative of Council of Architecture, India. Mise en Habitat production. Ar. Shaleen Sharma, writer, producer and director, 2001.

Jeffrey M. ChusidAssociate Professor, Historic Preservation, Department of City and Regional Planning, College of Architecture, Art and Planning, Cornell university