It’s unlikely you’ve ever heard of Joseph Allen Stein but he is the only architect in India to have a street named after him and he has his own corner of New Delhi that goes by the name Steinabad (you know, like Ahmedabad or Hyderabad). Unlike the monumental modernism of  Le Corbusier in Chandigarh or the brutalism of Louis Kahn in Ahmedabad, Stein’s approach was quieter and more contextual but just as influential. So what is his story and how did he come to be working in India?

Iain Jackson, Professor of Architecture and Research Director at Liverpool University is the guest contributor for this piece. His PhD research catalogued the extraordinary Rock Garden of Chandigarh and he is quite the expert on the achievements of Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry in Chandigarh.

Maxwell Fry at Farleys House 1957

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Photograph: Lee Miller

Times columnist, Iain Macwhirter, was no enthusiast for brutalist architecture, but Le Corbusier's masterpiece city of Chandigarh in North West India took his breath away.