Shri Ram Centre Case Study: Plan, Section and Auditorium (Shivnath Prasad)

The Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts at Mandi House, New Delhi, is a theatre building in exposed concrete designed by Shiv Nath Prasad (also spelt Shivnath Prasad), with the structural engineer Mahendra Raj, in the second half of the 1960s. Its main auditorium is a concrete drum 21 m across, lifted on six columns over an open foyer, and above it sits a separate block about 31 m square on four cross-shaped columns. Below: brief, site, concept, plan, structure, materials, changes since opening and lessons, with two MOA diagrams.

What is the Shri Ram Centre? The brief and the client

The Shri Ram Centre is the home of a Delhi theatre institution. Its own website says it grew out of what was first called the Indian National Theatre in 1950, and that it now runs a repertory company (active since the 1980s), festivals and acting courses. The building came later, in the 1960s.

The best account of the brief is the one the designers published themselves. In "Sri Ram Centre for Art and Culture" (1972, via Architexturez), Shiv Nath Prasad and Mahendra Raj describe the client as a private trust active in promoting dance, drama and music, and say the client's needs were extensive for such a small site. The list was long for a quarter of a hectare:

• a main theatre on the first floor, given as 550 seats and 21 m in diameter
• a small experimental theatre in the basement
• an entrance hall and ticket foyer that could also hold exhibitions, with a coffee shop for the various art groups
• offices and the manager's flat on a mezzanine over the cloakrooms
• on the top floor, rehearsal and dance spaces, dormitories for visiting performers and a small circular auditorium for puppet shows and films

Bhawna Dandona's 2026 article for ArchitectureLive says the building was sponsored by the Shri Ram family and that Prasad worked with guidance from the theatre director Ebrahim Alkazi, who helped him give each function its own level and form.

Site and context: Mandi House

Prasad and Raj place the site "in the heart of New Delhi, adjacent to other cultural institutes". The area is Mandi House, and the Centre's website still gives Mandi House as its nearest metro station.

The size of the plot drove the design. At 0.25 ha, a single-storey spread of theatre, rehearsal rooms and hostel would have filled the site and left no open ground. The designers stacked the programme instead, and kept the ground floor as open as they could.

The architect brought planning experience to the job. According to Sarbjit Bahga's 2018 profile, Prasad, born in Lucknow in 1922, trained at the Edinburgh College of Art, returned to India in 1955 and led the Indian team on the first Master Plan for Delhi. He left government service in 1962 and ran a one-man practice in Delhi for about a decade, the years of this building. Bahga notes that Prasad never worked with Le Corbusier, although he is often called "the Le Corbusier of India"; the #SOSBRUTALISM entry says the same.

Concept: one function, one level, one structure

The 1972 text states the idea in one line: each part of the brief is expressed at its own level, as a distinct form, with independent structural supports, all in exposed concrete. Read the building from the street and you can name the parts:

• The ground floor has as little enclosure as possible, so the foyer spaces "flow to encounter grass, trees and sunshine" (Prasad and Raj, 1972).
• The drum holds the main auditorium. #SOSBRUTALISM describes a large concrete cylinder raised on stilts that appears to float.
• The block on top is, in the same entry, a much larger, squat rectangular volume that cantilevers out and was designed as flexible, multi-purpose space.

It is a section idea first, so our first diagram is a section.

Shri Ram Centre plan and zoning, floor by floor

Students searching for the "shri ram centre for performing arts plan" will find that the zoning is vertical. Using the 1972 description:

Level	What is there
Basement	A small experimental theatre
Ground floor	Entrance hall and ticket foyer, usable for exhibitions; coffee shop; cloakrooms
Mezzanine	Offices and the manager's flat, over the cloakrooms
First floor	Main auditorium in the drum, with stage and green rooms
Top floor	Rehearsal and dance spaces, dormitories for visiting performers, a small circular auditorium for puppet shows and films

The plan published with the 1972 text labels the auditorium, stage, rehearsal room and two green rooms. You can see the original plan and section on the Architexturez record; we have not redrawn them. Photographs from 1985 are held by MIT's Rotch Visual Collections (Dome record, all rights reserved).

Stacking keeps the public route short, from open foyer up into the drum, and puts rehearsals and dormitories on their own floor and structure above.

Section and structure: Mahendra Raj's two systems

The structure is what gives the building its look, and the sources agree that it came out of a conversation between architect and engineer. The 1972 text gives the basic figures:

• The drum is supported on circumferential and radial beams that cantilever from six columns.
• The top floor is "a large rectilinear mass" on four cross-shaped columns at 19 m centres, with 6 m cantilevers on all sides. That makes the block about 31 m square, the figure ArchitectureLive gives for its rehearsal hall.

ArchitectureLive describes the result as a square parasol on a cylindrical core, both cast in situ, resolved through two distinct structural systems. It adds a detail the 1972 text does not: the drum's hollow concrete wall also supports the balcony, pinned to the circumferential beam at the bottom and to the parasol slab at the top, so that the pair of connections counteracts the cantilever moment of the balcony.

The separation was not in the first design. In a 2019 lecture published by Matter, Vandini Mehta, a co-author of the book on Raj's work, says the final building is "quite different from the designs originally brought by the architect", and that its floating effect came from Raj's suggestion to separate the parasol from the drum. ArchitectureLive quotes Raj's recollection that Prasad was pleased with "the suggestion of the balcony and the separation of the structures on the four columns".

Drawn centred, a 21 m drum leaves the four corner columns of a 19 m grid clear, which is how the two systems can stand side by side. The drum's real position is not published, so treat this as our reading.

Materials and construction: exposed concrete and its textures

The whole building is reinforced concrete, cast in place and left exposed (Prasad and Raj, 1972; #SOSBRUTALISM). Visitors who look closely will see what ArchitectureLive calls the "fine grains of the formwork" still on the facade. Bahga lists the vocabulary Prasad took from Le Corbusier: sculptural forms, sun breakers, exposed concrete and water spouts.

The textures to look for on site:

• Formwork grain on the facade, left by the shuttering.
• Slanting concrete louvres on the windows of the square block, whose rhythm, ArchitectureLive notes, lines up with the coffered slab below.
• The coffered soffit of the block, seen from below as you approach.
• Projecting spouts that throw roof water clear of the walls.

For how in-situ concrete compares with other wall and roof choices in the capital today, see our guide to building materials in Delhi NCR.

Light, climate and services

Delhi has hot summers, and the building answers mainly through its section. The 1972 text describes the ground floor as open to grass, trees and sun. In our reading, the drum and the 6 m overhang of the top floor shade much of that open ground, and the slanting louvres shade the windows of the top block. Our guide to building materials by climate and region covers why shade and mass matter in composite climates like Delhi's.

The sources say little about services or acoustics: we found no published account of the air-conditioning, stage machinery or acoustic design. ArchitectureLive's research included an interview with the son of the project's plumbing engineer, G B Deolalikar, but the article does not detail the systems. If you are documenting the building for studio, this is the gap worth filling on site.

What has changed since it opened

The building opened as a working theatre. G P Deshpande recalled in a 2007 interview, published by The Daily Eye in 2021, that the first play staged at the Centre was Tamasha, directed by Sai Paranjpye, with Deshpande in the lead. The changes since then that sources document:

• The built design is not the first design. As above, Raj's structural changes produced the separation of drum and block (Matter; ArchitectureLive).
• The basement. The 1972 text describes a small experimental theatre there. Sudhanva Deshpande, writing in The Wire (5 August 2025), credits Rajinder Nath, the Centre's director in 1976 to 1981 and 1983 to 1989, with turning what was "originally meant to be storage space" into an intimate theatre, the Basement Theatre, which "functioned for over two decades". The two accounts differ on what the basement was meant for; both agree that it held a small theatre.
• Seat counts. The 1972 text gives 550 seats and Bahga gives 600. The Centre does not publish a current figure on its website, so check with its booking office before you cite a number.
• Heritage status. In December 2013 the Delhi Urban Art Commission circulated, for comment, INTACH's list of 62 post-independence buildings proposed for heritage protection (via Architexturez). The Shri Ram Centre is no. 24, "Shiv Nath Prasad, 1972". We found no record of it being notified.

Reception: what critics and historians said

Writers on Indian modernism now discuss it as an example of 1960s exposed concrete. The #SOSBRUTALISM database, drawing on Rajat Ray's text for the 2017 SOS Brutalism survey by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and the Wüstenrot Foundation, lists it as in use and stresses that Prasad reached this vocabulary without having worked under Le Corbusier. Bahga describes its forms in terms of the Corbusian vocabulary Prasad absorbed. INTACH's 2013 list also includes his Tibet House (1974). ArchitectureLive included it in its 2026 "Brutalist India" series. Its inclusion in INTACH's 2013 list shows that conservation bodies count it as heritage of the post-independence period.

We found no published critique of how it works as a theatre, and no dated account of repairs or alterations.

What designers in India can take from it today

These are our reading of the building, not claims from the sources.

1. On a small urban plot, draw the section first. A theatre, a hostel and rehearsal rooms on 0.25 ha only worked once each use got its own level. The same test helps on tight Indian sites today, from schools to community halls: list the uses, then ask which can sit over which.
2. Bring the structural engineer into the concept. The feature people remember, the drum floating under the block, came from Raj's suggestion. Early structural input can produce the idea, not just size the members.
3. Give the ground floor back. Lifting the hall left a shaded foyer that doubles as exhibition space and a coffee shop for artists. Under a raised hall, the ground can work as covered public space in a hot city.
4. Expect uses to change. The basement went from storage (or an experimental theatre, depending on the source) to a theatre that ran for two decades. Spaces with clear structure and simple access adapt more easily.

For a field method to document a building like this, see our architecture case study checklist, and for thesis ideas on cultural buildings, our B.Arch thesis topics by typology.

Visiting the Shri Ram Centre

The Centre is a working theatre, and the simplest way to see the inside is to attend a performance. Its website gives Mandi House as the nearest metro station and lists contacts for courses, events and auditorium booking. It does not print visiting hours for the building, so contact the Centre before going to study or photograph it.

FAQ

Who is the architect of the Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts?

Shiv Nath Prasad (also spelt Shivnath Prasad), with the structural engineer Mahendra Raj. ArchitectureLive adds that Ebrahim Alkazi advised on the design.

When was the Shri Ram Centre built?

Sources differ: 1966 to 1969 (#SOSBRUTALISM, Sarbjit Bahga), 1968 (ArchitectureLive), 1966 to 1972 (MIT's Rotch Visual Collections) and 1972 (INTACH's 2013 list). The designers' own description was published in 1972.

What is the seating capacity of the Shri Ram Centre auditorium?

The 1972 description gives 550 seats and Bahga gives 600. The Centre does not publish a current figure on its website; its booking office can confirm today's count.

Why is the Shri Ram Centre called a brutalist building?

It is built in exposed, cast-in-place concrete with the formwork grain left visible, and each function is shown as a bold separate form: a drum for the auditorium and a cantilevered block above it. #SOSBRUTALISM lists it among brutalist buildings worldwide.

Where is the Shri Ram Centre and what is the nearest metro station?

It is at Mandi House in central New Delhi. The Centre's website gives Mandi House as the nearest metro station.

Looking for an architect who can make a small site work this hard? Find an architect on MOA.

Sources

• Shiv Nath Prasad and Mahendra Raj: Sri Ram Centre for Art and Culture, New Delhi, 1972, via Architexturez (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts: About us and Contact us (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• ArchitectureLive, Bhawna Dandona: Brutalist India: Shri Ram Centre, New Delhi, 9 May 2026 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• #SOSBRUTALISM: Shri Ram Center for Art and Culture, excerpt from Rajat Ray in SOS Brutalism: A Global Survey, 2017 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• World Architecture Community, Sarbjit Bahga: An Ode To Shivnath Prasad: The Le Corbusier Of India, 26 January 2018 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Matter, Rohit Raj Mehndiratta and Vandini Mehta: Structural narrative of Indian Modernity as an oeuvre of Mahendra Raj, 15 December 2020 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• MIT Libraries, Rotch Visual Collections: Shri Ram Centre for the Performing Arts, exterior, detail of roof, 1985 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• Delhi Urban Art Commission, via Architexturez: List of buildings as modern heritage in Delhi, 20 December 2013 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• The Wire, Sudhanva Deshpande: Remembering Rajinder Nath, The Man Who Devoted His Life to Theatre, 5 August 2025 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
• The Daily Eye, Aparajita Krishna: Gup-shup with GoPu, 2 March 2021 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)