India International Centre Case Study: Plan, Jaali and Gardens (Joseph Allen Stein)

The India International Centre (IIC) in New Delhi is a set of low buildings by the American-born architect Joseph Allen Stein, completed in January 1962 on a site beside Lodi Gardens. Three wings, for rooms, dining and the library and auditorium, sit round lawns, paved courts and a lily pool, joined by covered walkways, and are built of exposed concrete and rough quartzite with screens of blue glazed tile.

India International Centre, New Delhi: the facts

Architect: Joseph Allen Stein, invited by C D Deshmukh (IIC). We found no named structural engineer or contractor in the sources we opened. Client: the India International Centre, a society registered in March 1959, started with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation (IIC).

Location: 40 Max Mueller Marg, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi, on a site of 4.76 acres next to Lodi Gardens (IIC).

Built: first sod turned 15 April 1960; completed and inaugurated 22 January 1962 (IIC). Photographer Ram Rahman dates the project 1959 to 1962.

Type: a members' cultural centre with guest rooms, dining, a library, an auditorium and conference rooms.

Later additions: the Annexe, inaugurated 29 December 1996, and the Kamaladevi Complex by S. Ghosh & Associates, inaugurated in March 2011 (IIC). Status: in use, with later additions on the site. Most programmes are open to the public. INTACH named it in its list of 62 modern buildings in Delhi; we found no record that it has been notified as a heritage building.

Who designed the India International Centre? The brief and the client

The idea came from John D. Rockefeller III, who proposed it to Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, then Vice-President of India, in 1958. The proposal came with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to start building, according to the IIC's own book on the Centre, India International Centre (IIC, about 2012). The Centre was founded on 24 December 1958 and registered as a society on 9 March 1959, according to the IIC's history page, and C D Deshmukh invited Joseph Allen Stein to be its architect.

The brief was a place to meet, talk and stay. Deshmukh wanted people of different cultures to "stay together for a while" (IIC book). That gave three functions: guest rooms for visiting members, dining and lounges, and a library, auditorium and offices for the Centre's programmes.

A 2024 talk on the Centre's history, reported by ThePrint (Almina Khatoon, 29 September 2024), added that Deshmukh and Rockefeller visited the International House of Japan in Tokyo before bringing Stein in, and that the first plans were for 45,000 to 50,000 sq ft. We found no source for the built floor area.

Joseph Allen Stein

Stein, born in Omaha in 1912, studied under Eliel Saarinen at Cranbrook and worked for Richard Neutra before coming to India in 1952 to head the new architecture and planning department at Bengal Engineering College, Calcutta, before setting up practice in Delhi, according to Ram Rahman's obituary in Frontline (2001), republished by Architexturez. Rahman wrote that it was at the IIC that Stein's "full design personality emerged". His later firm, Stein, Doshi & Bhalla, with B V Doshi and Jai Rattan Bhalla, continues as SDB Consultants.

Site and context: beside Lodi Gardens

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru took a personal interest in choosing the site, the IIC says: 4.76 acres next to Lodi Gardens, the park round monuments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including tombs of the Lodi kings (IIC). The garden lies on the west, and the Centre's address and vehicle gates are on Max Mueller Marg.

The IIC book calls it the first of seven institutional projects Stein laid out "like an informal campus" in the area, including the Ford Foundation and WWF-India; the area is often called Steinabad. ThePrint's report adds that Lodi Gardens itself, laid out by the British in 1936 as Lady Willingdon Park, was redesigned by Stein in 1968 and given its present name.

India International Centre concept: "simplicity and relationships"

In an interview the IIC quotes, Stein said there was "an attempt to create something which depended upon simplicity and relationships rather than things", and that the Centre was "not a five-star appearance in marble and granite" but a place where a relationship exists between the garden, the building, the water, the earth and the sky.

Three more lines, as the IIC records them, explain the plan:

"The informal or romantic approach, where each function seeks out its own expression." Each use gets its own wing rather than one block holding everything.
Human scale. The IIC book says the low sweep of the buildings was meant to relate to the human scale, because Stein believed that is when "man comes into relationship with nature".
Meeting outdoors. Members meet in the spaces between, in paved courts, in shade or in open gardens; the book quotes Stein that when "the conditions are right for cooperation, one's mind expands".

India International Centre plan: three wings round courts and lawns

The plan is three separate wings, each for one function, round lawns, courts and a lily pool. The IIC's Building and Environment page gives them as:

North wing: residential rooms. Its curving facade follows the curving paths of Lodi Gardens. Most ground-floor rooms open straight onto the lawns or the Lily Pond, and rooms on the first and second floors have private verandas (IIC book).
West wing: dining. The dining hall and lounge face Lodi Gardens; the IIC book describes the dining hall as hexagonal, with large windows that look out over the gardens and the tombs.
South wing: library, auditorium and administrative offices. The auditorium seats 231 and has what the IIC book calls Stein's honeycomb ceiling.

The wings are joined by walkways with overhanging eaves, and a central portico greets visitors at the entrance driveway. The IIC book also lists two conference rooms of about 75 seats each, an octagonal conference room facing the gardens, a private dining hall and a terrace pergola.

Where the sources disagree

The IIC's website gives the wings above, with the portico on a north-south axis. The IIC book (about 2012) puts the rooms in the west wing, dining in the south and the library in the east, with an east-west portico, yet also puts the dining hall on the west side facing the gardens. Our diagram follows the website. Check on site or in Stein's drawings before you add a north arrow to a thesis sheet.

Schematic zoning diagram of the India International Centre main complex: Lodi Gardens on the west, Max Mueller Marg on the east, a curving north wing of residential rooms, a west wing of dining hall and lounge looking out to the gardens, a south wing of library, auditorium and offices, and a central lawn with a lily pool, the three wings linked by covered walkways. — How Stein's three wings sit round the lawns and courts, as the IIC describes them. Schematic, not to scale. Diagram: MOA, from published descriptions. Diagram: MOA

For the real plans and sections, see Stephen White's book Building in the Garden: The Architecture of Joseph Allen Stein in India and California (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1993).

Section and structure: low blocks, deep edges

The wings are low: the IIC book describes rooms on the ground, first and second floors,, so the residential wing is three storeys at most. The IIC's website describes the structure as "exposed concrete and massive piers" with rugged quartzite stone; the IIC book mentions exposed concrete and exposed roof patterns. Writer Barun Ghosh, in Live History India (21 November 2020), describes the IIC as built in prefabricated concrete with many concrete jaalis. We found no published structural description or engineer's name, so treat the frame as what you can see.

Schematic section from a garden, through a three-storey wing, to a covered walkway and a lawn court: a projecting concrete roof edge, jaali screens in front of upper-floor verandas, quartzite piers at ground level, a ground-floor room opening to the lawn, breeze arrows from the garden, and illustrative high summer and low winter sun lines. — The section principle: deep roof edge, screened verandas, stone piers and shaded walkways between garden and court. Sun angles are illustrative. Schematic, not to scale. Diagram: MOA

Materials and construction: quartzite, concrete and blue tile jaali

The IIC book sums up the palette: Stein combined north Indian garden traditions and craft with "the modern use of exposed concrete and exposed roof patterns", and the local materials, "rugged quartzite and blue Kota flooring", are softened by screened jalis in blue ceramic tiles of the kind found in Islamic architecture. Ram Rahman's list is similar: local stone, cast concrete jaalis and blue and green ceramic tiles as highlights, which he reads as an updating of Delhi's Sultanate architecture that Stein studied on weekly site visits.

The screens are built up from glazed tiles and cast concrete, not carved from stone. At the 2024 talk, SPA professor Manoj Mathur said the screens keep pigeons out while letting air and light through (ThePrint). For screens in a house today, see our guide to jaali design for homes; for Kota and other stones, natural stone for houses compared.

The entrance driveway of the India International Centre in New Delhi: a long scalloped concrete canopy over the entrance portico with rubble stone walls below, a tall grey textured tower, and two- and three-storey wings with screened facades in a white concrete frame, behind a lawn and potted flowers. — The entrance side in January 2020: the scalloped concrete canopy, the screened upper floors and the stone at ground level. Photo: Death Star Central, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Light, climate and services: how it handles Delhi's summer

The sources describe how the IIC deals with heat and glare in terms of parts, not measurements:

Shaded movement. Walkways with overhanging eaves join the wings, so you cross from rooms to dining to library in shade (IIC).
Screened verandas. Upper-floor rooms have private verandas, and the jaali screens filter light. Barun Ghosh writes that the jaalis admit the most light in winter and the least in summer; that is his reading, not a measured result.
Air from the garden. The IIC book says light, air and breeze flow from the gardens into the residential rooms,.
Low height under trees. Two and three storeys sit in the shade of trees that the Deshmukhs took a personal interest in planting (IIC book).

We found no published measurement of temperatures inside the IIC. The guest rooms were centrally air-conditioned by the time of the IIC book (about 2012), so the passive measures now work alongside mechanical cooling. For building in Delhi's climate today, see our guide to building materials for Delhi NCR.

Later additions: the Annexe and the Kamaladevi Complex

Date	What was added	Source
29 December 1996	The Annexe, on grounds nearby: a central foyer opening to a stepped garden, committee and lecture rooms, a dining hall, lounge and bar, an art gallery in the basement and a residential block of 18 bedrooms on two floors	IIC website and book
March 2011	The Kamaladevi Complex (called the Conference Block in the IIC book), by S. Ghosh & Associates: a multipurpose hall for 350, three seminar rooms that merge for 150, an art gallery on the second floor and two basements	IIC website and book
2024 to 2026	Guest rooms renovated, with energy-efficient double-glazed windows; kitchens renovated; a sewage treatment plant for the Annexe, funded by IREDA under its CSR programme	IIC Annual Report 2025 to 2026

The IIC names no architect for the Annexe in the pages we opened. Wikipedia credits it to Stein, but cites a travel page, so we have left the credit open.

The Kamaladevi Complex is the larger change to Stein's plan. The IIC book says it was "built over the space formerly known as the rock garden and central court area" between the Rockefeller Wing and Lodi Gardens, with its own gate on Max Mueller Marg. The architects, it says, "meticulously matched the materials and detailing" of the original. It added lifts, rainwater harvesting, wastewater recycling, solar hot water and an insulated roof. The website dates the opening 31 March 2011, the book 30 March 2011.

Changes now pass through the Centre's Architectural Design and Advisory Committee, which recommended the new room designs (IIC Annual Report 2025 to 2026).

Reception: what critics, members and owners said

Ram Rahman (Frontline, 2001) placed the IIC with Stein's Triveni Kala Sangam and wrote that "four decades of India's cultural life" had been nurtured in the two.
The IIC itself describes the buildings' "austere beauty and conscious lack of ostentation"; India Post marked its 50th year with a stamp on 9 February 2012 (iStampGallery).
Heritage listing. INTACH named the IIC in its list of 62 modern buildings in Delhi that it wanted conserved, which The Times of India reported in 2016 (via Architexturez) We found no notification of the IIC as a heritage building.
Changes and losses. At the 2024 talk reported by ThePrint, architect Ravi Kaimal showed a photo of a pavilion with a fountain that once stood where the IIC hall now is, and said: "Nobody knows where or how it disappeared."

What designers in India can take from it today

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

Separate the functions and shade the links. Stein gave each use its own low wing and joined them with covered walkways. On a large site in a hot city, a shaded outdoor route can do the work of a corridor.
Build the screen from a repeated unit. The jaalis are made of glazed tiles and cast concrete rather than carved stone. A screen of standard pieces is easier to make, repair and replace.
Borrow the landscape next door. The dining hall and rooms face Lodi Gardens, so the building gains a view and shade it did not plant. Find what your site can look at before fixing the plan.
Decide which open spaces are part of the plan. The 2011 block matched Stein's materials, but it took the rock garden and central court. If the courts carry the design, protect them in the brief for future growth.

To document a building like this for a studio or thesis, follow our field checklist for an architecture case study.

Visiting the India International Centre

The IIC is at 40 Max Mueller Marg, New Delhi 110003. Its programmes page says: "Most of the IIC programmes are open to the public without tickets or invitations." Rooms and dining are for members and their guests, according to the IIC book. Check the programme listing before you go, and respect the Centre's rules on photography and access.

FAQ

Who designed the India International Centre?

Joseph Allen Stein, invited by C D Deshmukh. The Kamaladevi Complex of 2011 is by S. Ghosh & Associates. We found no IIC source naming the Annexe's architect.

When was the India International Centre built?

The first sod was turned on 15 April 1960, Crown Prince Akihito of Japan laid the foundation stone in November 1960, and the building was inaugurated by Dr S Radhakrishnan on 22 January 1962 (IIC).

What is the India International Centre?

A members' cultural centre in New Delhi, founded in 1958 and registered as a society in 1959, with guest rooms, dining, a library, an auditorium and conference rooms. Most of its talks, films and performances are open to the public.

What materials are used in the India International Centre?

Exposed concrete, rugged quartzite, blue Kota stone flooring and jaali screens of blue glazed ceramic tile, according to the IIC.

Where can I find the India International Centre plan?

Stephen White's Building in the Garden (Oxford University Press, 1993) is the published record of Stein's work. Our diagram above is a schematic zoning plan, not a copy of the drawings.

Looking for an architect who can design for Indian climate and context? Find an architect on MOA.

Sources

India International Centre: History (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
India International Centre: Building and Environment (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
India International Centre: India International Centre (book, printed about 2012) (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
India International Centre: Annual Report 2025 to 2026 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
India International Centre: Programmes (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Ram Rahman, Frontline, via Architexturez: Obituary: Joseph Allen Stein, 1912 to 2001 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
ThePrint: Mystery of the vanished pavilion in Delhi's IIC, Almina Khatoon, 29 September 2024 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Live History India: Lodhi Estate: Steinabad and the American Heart of Delhi, Barun Ghosh, 21 November 2020 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
The Times of India, via Architexturez: Fight on to save Hall of Nations, March 2016 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
SDB Consultants: About (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Open Library: Stephen White, Building in the Garden (Oxford University Press, 1993) (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
iStampGallery: India International Centre stamp, 2012 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Wikimedia Commons: India International Centre.jpg, Death Star Central, CC BY-SA 4.0 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)