Art: Taj Mahal Modern

Some of the choicest prestige plums in the contemporary architectural world are handed out by the U.S. Department of State for its ten-year, $200 million, overseas embassy and consulate-building program. The program stipulates that the new buildings must be 1) functional, 2) sympathetic to surrounding architecture, and 3) in harmony with the cultures and traditions of the countries in which they are built. To help architects get the feel of their assignment, the Government foots the bill for an on-the-spot inspection. Administered by an advisory group of leading architects and diplomats, the program has attracted the top architectural firms in the country, produced such outstanding plans as Eero Saarinen’s design for the new London embassy (TIME, March 19), Marcel Breuer’s chancery at The Hague.

Glitter on the Lagoon. Last week in New Delhi, Chief Justice Earl Warren took time out from his crowded traveler’s agenda to set the cornerstone for the handsomest new embassy to date, a $1,000,000, gilded-aluminum columned, concrete-and-marble chancery. Its designer: Manhattan Architect Edward D. Stone, a co-designer of Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art and architect for Panama’s superdeluxe, 300-room El Panama Hotel. When it is completed in early 1958, it will perch over a null lagoon and glitter in the hot Indian sun like a maharaja’s expensive present.

Ironically, it was not the needs of building for an old culture, but requirements raised by the gasoline engine that confronted Architect Stone, 54, with his first problem. “In India it is so hot,” Stone explains, “that cars have to be parked under shelter or else they turn into ovens. To get them under cover, we raised the building on a marble platform or podium. We are using a precedent of antiquity. Even the Taj Mahal is built on a great square platform.”

To beat the 100°-plus heat, Architect Stone borrowed another device from Indian buildings, extended the roof 20 ft. to create a portico supported by narrow, gilded-aluminum columns that run around the whole perimeter. From the Taj Mahal he borrowed the idea of marble and ala baster grilles to cut down glare, but to keep the execution modern. Stone designed a screen of pierced tile that will drop from roof to floor, giving the two-story building an expansive one-story appearance. A double roof with air conditioning will do the job lyth century Indian builders solved with the Taj Mahal’s soaring white domes.

Shadows on the Water Garden. Embassy workers will look out into an enclosed court and water garden, screened over with metal-mesh aluminum to break the sunlight and give the effect of light filtering through tree branches. “With the courtyard,” Stone points out. “the building will also get cross ventilation when it is not necessary to use the air conditioning.” To set .off the building, Stone is using “another Oriental device,” a pool to reflect the structure.

Edward Stone, the State Department and the Indian government are all pleased with the resulting design. “I think the outstanding thing about it is its calmness and serenity, which an Indian building should have,” says Architect Stone. “Frank Lloyd Wright, who never seems to like anybody else’s work, told me that this was one of the finest buildings in the last hundred years.”