Sir Edwin Lutyen

Cycling through the street of New Delhi shows a very clear contrast between New Delhi and Old Delhi which can be compared to the rich and the poor part in Delhi. New Delhi was largely designed by Lutyens over twenty years from the year 1912 to 1930, the Metropolis part of Delhi is a replacement of Calcutta for the British Indian government during 1912. On December 1911 King George V proclaimed the transfer of his capital from Calcutta to Delhi. Once New Delhi was selected for transformation a group of experts is then being selected to help create the “New Delhi”. Some of the experts being chosen were the architects, Sir Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker,  and the engineer John A. Brodie. After the site and committee were chosen, the exact site location had to be identified. 

Lutyens argued for a site south of Shah Jahan's seventeenth century Mughal capital, on a low hill close to the village of Raisina. In a letter to the Committee, Lutyens confirmed the site's favorable "aspect, altitude, water, health, virgin soil, and views across old Delhi to the wilderness of ruined tombs that form the remains of the seven older Delhi." After some initial disagreement, he was successful in convincing the others. Because this location has shown the siting of the new city assumed a growth pattern in all directions. Unlike in Bombay or Calcutta, whose physical geographies define urban growth, the wide expanse of developable land on all sides was considered a significant advantage. The site's spaciousness, combined with the prevailing design ethos of the day, leads to a decidedly suburban character, New Delhi was planned as a Beaux Arts-style Garden City, replete with extremely large building plots and wide boulevards arranged in monumental symmetry. Anyway the axial vistas also relate the new buildings of the colonial infrastructure to existing monuments that lay outside Shahjahanabad's gates. Lutyen's grandiose Government House (Rashtrapati Bhawan) is located on Raisina Hill, and one of New Delhi's major thoroughfares, Rajpath, connects it to the Purana Qil'a (1533). Another sightline originates at Connaught Place, passes through the War Memorial Arch (or India Gate, 1921) and terminates at Humayun's mausoleum(1572), at the southeastern edge of the new city.

                                                    New Delhi's Plan

                                                                    Rashtrapati Bhawan

                                                                        India Gate

                                                            Sir Edwin Lutyen