Negotiating Cultures: Delhi Architecture and Planning from 1912 to 1962

This book is the result of four years of research conducted for the PhD thesis titled: The City of Delhi 1912-1962. Conflicts of Cultures, Quest for a Destiny. It focuses on the city of Delhi, one of the largest mega-cities in the world, and examines – from a historical perspective – the process of hybridisation between cultures within its local architecture and urban planning. It analyses Delhi’s architecture and urban development from 1912, when the British Town Planning Committee for New Delhi was formed, to 1962, when the first Master plan was implemented. The research originates directly from primary documents and examines how and to what extent the city plans, the neighbourhoods, the types of residential or public buildings, and the architectural styles have changed over time. The analysis of architectural elements, the city and its intricacies, is in itself useful to understand how foreign models were adopted, how much resistance was encountered, and how much adaptation there was to local conditions. Delhi can be considered to be a comprehensive model or case study of the intermingling and conflict of cultures, its initial transition period when the mega-city was born gives an important starting point to critically investigate the current phenomenon of globalization.