Joseph Allen Stein

He is noted for designing several important buildings in India, most notably in Lodi Estate in Central Delhi, nicknamed "Steinabad" after him, and where today the 'Joseph Stein Lane', is the only road in Delhi named after an architect. He is also famous for being the architect of the scenic Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode's campus. His work in both countries were inflected by socialist principles, modern aesthetics, and environmental consciousness. The most active years of his career are marked by the beginning of World War II and the rise of post-Independence India, a political period characterised by technological development world over and reflected in his modernist architecture. In 1992, the Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of Padma Shri. His works become relevant in a moment of environmental crisis where the need for sustainable and humane architecture is freshly felt.

Joseph Allen Stein was born on 10 April 1912, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Jewish parents who had immigrated from East Europe. He studied architecture at the University of Illinois, the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Before establishing his practice in San Francisco, he worked as an apprentice for Ely Jacques Kahn in New York during the Great Depression, and with Richard Neutra in Los Angeles. Los Angeles brought him in touch with Gregory Ain, a social activist and visionary architect, who would be significant influence in Stein's life. In San Francisco, he started working with Hervey P. Clark and later joined Bechtel which operated the Marinship yard during World War II. During his stint in California, Stein had presented prototypes for war housing at Architecture Forum (1942). However he is best known for designing modest homes in the California-style driven by his interest in the issues of low-cost housing. He was also an active member of the group known as Telesis, which sought to bring better design to the needs of the middle and working classes. With the rise of McCarthyism in 1950, he felt the need to find a location where his talent as an architect could be more freely expressed. Moreover, Stein was being investigated for his political views. His son, David, revealed in an interview that Stein's name was on the attorney general's list of suspects for being critical of the Korean War. Stein had then been designing a 400-home housing cooperative at Ladera, for a mixed-race community in San Mateo County. However, racial hostility from civic society and federal policy discouraged Stein from staying. He left the US, first for Mexico and then for Europe, and finally arrived to teach at Bengal Engineering College (now Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur) outside Calcutta.

In 1952 he moved to India and became head of the department of architecture at the Bengal Engineering College in Calcutta. He worked in New Delhi from 1955 onwards, starting with another American architect, Benjamin Polk and even after retirement in 1995, continued to design for the architecture firm he founded. In 1954, Stein along with his students, presented designs for low-costing housing using brick and adobe for urban and rural structures respectively. The presentation in Delhi, along with Stein's affiliation with Benjamin Polk brought him into the limelight and earned him projects in emerging industrial towns in India such as Jamshedpur, Rourkela, and Durgapur. In 1955, Stein set up his firm in New Delhi, called Joseph Allen Stein and Associates. In 1977, he concluded his stint as an independent by joining as a partner with Bhalla and Doshi. In the 40 years of his career in India, he worked with the likes of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, introducing innovative methods of construction with concrete and local stone to the Indian landscape. The socialist ethos of the public-works department in Nehru's government gave Stein the opportunity to actualise his plans for Ladera, except in a different context. After his three-year long teaching stint in Durgapur, Stein moved to Delhi to work on government commissioned projects, starting with the Australian High Commission and Gandhi Bhavan in Delhi University. Both these structures were characterised by Stein's signature use of pour-over concrete, as well as a local quartzite for stairs, piers, walls. The local quartzite was cut into pentagons and arranged in rows as a homage to straight, geometrical design which Stein had inherited from the Bay area tradition. This was offset by concrete shells mimicking Mughal domes, and clay tiles by local artisans which gave these designs an Indian touch. Stein's work in India was keen to bring together dualities of the local and the global, the inside and the outside. He was inspired by Gandhi who envisioned, "the possibility of combining simplicity and science, industry and agriculture" to present a model for progress. Over the years, he brought in 'California modernism' to several buildings he designed in Delhi, including, the Ford Foundation headquarters and the India International Centre (IIC) (1962), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Wide Fund for Nature, a conservatory within Lodi Gardens (with Garret Eckbo), Gandhi-King Plaza, an open-air memorial in IIC, Triveni Kala Sangam at Mandi House, the American Embassy School and the Australian high commission in Chanakyapuri. Among his notable buildings outside Delhi was the Express Towers, the first high rise built in India, and at the time it was completed, the tallest building in South Asia. In 2008, the Indian International centre was voted the best building in Delhi by Outlook India in a magazine poll conducted among local architect. India Habitat Centre, also designed by Stein was at a close second. Projects like the Indian International Centre, which was to be a landmark in India's cultural zeitgeist, were being promoted Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to establish India's relevance globally. Expatriate architects from Britain, America, Germany, and Russia were competing to gain prominence in India's urban landscape, where a global convergence was made possible by Nehru's participation Non Aligned Movement. Stein was able to rise to popularity since he could bring the Nehruvian vision for modern India to life on a budget, given the conditions of technological limitations and financial corruption that pervaded the new nation. From the last leg of his career, after joining Bhalla and Doshi in 1977, two projects stand out: Institute for Crop Research in the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Hyderabad and Kashmir Conference Center in Srinagar. Both these projects were ecologically attuned in interesting ways. ICRISAT being a scientific facility that was built to preserve strands of rare grains was climate-controlled by integrating electrical systems into "waffle-slabs", a salient feature of its architecture. On the other hand, the Kashmir Conference Center, located on the banks of the Dal Lake, is the first instance of lake-sourced cooling in India. Stein also chose to use concrete instead of wood, which is the traditional choice of material in Kashmir, to save the local Deodar Cedar that grew by the lake.

• Illustration — Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, the fifth IIM to be established in the prestigious IIM family, started construction of hilltop campus in 2001 and was completed by 2003. • 1940: "One Family Defense House" (with Gregory Ain), unbuilt • 1940: "Low-Cost House", unbuilt • 1947: Ladera Cooperative (with John Funk; landscape architect: Garrett Eckbo), Palo Alto, California • 1950: 70 Summit Ave, Mill Valley, landscape architect: Lawrence Halprin - under threat to be redeveloped • 1955: Planning of Durgapur, West Bengal, India along with Benjamin Polk. • 1968: Indian Express Towers, Nariman Point, Mumbai, relandscaping of Lodi Gardens, along with Garrett Eckbo. • Several buildings in Lodi Estate, New Delhi, including the headquarters of the Ford Foundation, Unicef and the World Wide Fund for Nature, a conference centre called the India International Center (1959–62), and the India Habitat Center for housing and environmental studies. • Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode campus, Kerala, India. • Triveni Kala Sangam Arts Centre, New Delhi, India. • Several factories with roofs inspired by the domes used in traditional Indian architecture • Kashmir Conference Center, India. • 1962 – General Education Centre, now Cultural Education Centre for Performing Arts Kennedy House Complex of Aligarh Muslim University, India. www.cecamu.in • Four factories for Escorts Ltd., Faridabad, India • American Embassy School, New Delhi, India. • Delhi Public School, Gurgaon (now Gurugram)