Durgapur township takes shape in the 1950s

Joseph Allen Stein was an architect who was born and educated in the US, worked there till 1952, taught in India, fell in love with the country and never went back.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1912, Stein graduated from the University of Illinois in the early 1930s and went to Ecole des Beaux Arts in France for further study. He worked with the celebrated architect, Richard Neutra, in Los Angeles before setting up his own practice in San Francisco.

During the economic depression of the 1930s, Stein designed a number of war workers’ houses for people with limited income.

Stein came to India in 1952 to head the architecture department at Bengal Engineering College in Shibpur and was excited by the opportunity to practise socially responsible architecture in a newly independent country.

In the four decades that he lived and worked in India, he taught architecture and designed buildings for cultural institutions, factories, universities and even entire townships, making significant contributions to post-Independence India. He was awarded the Padma Shri, an exceptional honour for a citizen of another country.

In 1952, Stein was asked to start the department of architecture, town and regional planning at Bengal Engineering College, where he accepted a three-year appointment, beginning a career in India which stretched to 40 years.

A heightened sense of purpose characterised Stein’s early efforts in India. It was revealed in the research undertaken with students towards developing low-cost urban and rural houses.

The design for the rural house, the local cost of which in Bengal was estimated to be around Rs 1,500 in 1954, illustrated the possibilities for good housing inherent in the traditional techniques and indigenous materials. While wood was used for the roof framing, the remainder of the construction was of clay and bamboo. The floor was treated with cow dung, and the doors and windows were designed with split and woven bamboo.

Brick and cement walls and sheet roofing, on an extremely simple wooden frame, were used as materials for the urban prototype. Two sleeping rooms, a large private verandah enclosed by an ample walled court, a visitors’ reception area in the form of a smaller verandah opening on to the street, a kitchen, bath and toilet could be built for an estimated Rs 3,500 (in 1954), including the cost of electrical and sanitary fittings.

The design also allowed adequate space for completely private gardens, for Stein believed a garden presents the chief opportunity to achieve some measure of poetry and beauty in low-cost housing.

He described the larger purpose behind these designs as being not merely to provide shelter for the body, but to provide a home for the spirit.

Further research with students formed the basis of Stein’s first major Indian works of the mid-1950s, garden-city inspired housing and neighbourhood plans for the Union government’s steel townships at Durgapur and Rourkela, and for the Tata Iron and Steel Company’s township at Jamshedpur.

In these townships, Stein tried to balance Jawaharlal Nehru’s ideal of an industrialised India by providing workers with dignified housing of timeless quality, which he believed was possible even at low cost. Compact interior spaces open out to gardens and outdoor spaces in these first Indian housing schemes.

The Durgapur township for 50,000 workers, which Stein designed in collaboration with Benjamin Polk, is based on a neighbourhood unit, or superblock, of up to 1,000 dwellings. These superblocks support a middle school and a community centre with a small open-air theatre, both designed for the entire neighbourhood and an eight-minute walk from the farthest house.

The design illustrates Stein’s faith in planned, integrated neighbourhoods and pedestrian access to all facilities without the need to cross automobile traffic. Parks and open spaces are available to all, and there is also the possibility of future expansion without upsetting the original balance of the community.

Durgapur was not an ideal example of a township in a hot-dry climate and was never considered a role model. But it provided him with a lot of exposure to the Indian construction industry.

To be concluded