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ABSTRACT
The choice of New Delhi as the location for the first Australian diplomatic building to be constructed after the Second World War reflected the growing significance of India in relation to the spread of Communism in Asia. As the importance of diplomatic representation and activity for Australia within India grew, so too did the need for suitable premises. For this purpose, arguments were made for the erection of new buildings in New Delhi for Australia’s Department of External Affairs. From initial design ideas in 1951, it took over ten years for the Head of Mission residence to be completed in 1962, and then another four years for the chancery to be opened in 1966. This paper describes the process that led to the construction of the first of these – the HOM residence – which involved two different design concepts, one based on an Australian colonial stylistic idiom and the other on a modern regionalist approach. The paper examines these two concepts for their representational intent, revealing that the desired image of respectful dignity was open to architectural interpretation which itself depended on the political complexities and practical challenges facing the Australian government in its effort to construct a diplomatic building in India in the 1950s.
Authors’ Note
The authors would like to thank members of the Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA) at the University of Adelaide for their helpful comments in response to an early presentation of this paper.
Notes
1. Minister for External Affairs Rt. Hon. R.G. Casey, “The Conduct of Australian Foreign Policy” (paper presented at the Australian Institute of International Affairs: The Third Roy Milne Memorial Lecture, Brisbane, 25 September 1952), 18.
2. See P. G. Edwards, Prime Ministers and Diplomats: The Making of Foreign Policy 1901–1949 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983), 116–130.
3. Edwards, Prime Ministers and Diplomats, 150.
4. Nayantara Pothen, “Diplomatic Despatches from New Delhi: The Australian High Commission and the Australian-India Relationship 1946–1947,” in India and Australia: Bridging Different Worlds, eds. Brian Stoddart and Auriol Weigold (New Delhi: Readworthy Publications, 2011), 44.
5. Pothen, “Diplomatic Despatches from New Delhi,” 46.
6. Walter Crocker, Australian Ambassador: International Relations at First Hand (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1971), 5.
7. As reported in “India to Fight Communism,” Newcastle Morning Herald, 12 August 1950, 3.
8. See Ravi Tomar, “India-US Relations in a Changing Strategic Environment,” Research Paper no. 20, 2001–2002. Available online www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp0102/02RP20.
9. See Jane C. Loeffler, The Architecture of Diplomacy: Building America’s Embassies, rev. 2nd ed. (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), 183–184.
10. Loeffler, The Architecture of Diplomacy, 185.
11. “Australia House,” Architectural Review 46, no. 262 (September 1918): 51. For an in-depth study of the creation of “Australia House” see Eileen Chanin, Capital Designs: Australia House and Visions of an Imperial London (North Melbourne, Vic.: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018).
12. See Australia House: 75 Years of Service, ed. Jan Payne (London: Public Affairs Branch, Australian High Commission, 1993), 28.
13. Australia House, London: The Offices in Great Britain of the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia, Opened by His Majesty the King, 3 August 1918 (London: Printing Craft, 1918).
14. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from Iven Mackay, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to J. Chifley, Acting Minister of State Department of External Affairs, 23 August 1946.
15. “Aust. High Commiss’ner in India,” Maryborough Chronicle, 22 August 1944, 2.
16. “Aust. High Commiss’ner in India,” 2.
17. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from Iven Mackay, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to H. Evatt, Minister of State Department of External Affairs, 5 September 1945.
18. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from Iven Mackay, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to J. Chifley.
19. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from Iven Mackay, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to J. Chifley.
20. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from Iven Mackay, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to J. Chifley.
21. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from Iven Mackay, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to J. Chifley.
22. “New Delhi Housing Woes; Congestion, Requisitioning and Slow Motion Building,” The Statesman (New Delhi), 17 August 1946, 2.
23. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from Iven MacKay, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to H. Evatt, Minister Department of External Affairs, 8 October 1946.
24. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from Iven MacKay, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to H. Evatt.
25. For detail on Charles Blomfield see Giles Tillotson, “CG Blomfield, Last Architect of the Raj,” South Asian Studies 24, no.1 (August 2010): 133–139.
26. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, memorandum from C. Moodie, Assistant Secretary, Department of External Affairs, to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 23 January 1947.
27. The plans were assessed by Henry Rolland, Director of Architecture at the Department of Works and Housing in Melbourne and modified to reduce the estimated cost of construction. See NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from Iven MacKay, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to H. Rolland, Director of Architecture, Department of Works and Housing, 14 October 1946.
28. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, “Proposed Accommodation for High Commissioner, New Delhi, India-(Your Reference B.1456)-Visit to New Delhi, Jan. 20th to Jan. 24th, 1947.”
29. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, “Proposed Accommodation for High Commissioner, New Delhi, India-(Your Reference B.1456)-Visit to New Delhi, Jan. 20th to Jan. 24th, 1947.”
30. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, “Proposed Accommodation for High Commissioner, New Delhi, India-(Your Reference B.1456)-Visit to New Delhi, Jan. 20th to Jan. 24th, 1947.”
31. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, “Proposed Accommodation for High Commissioner, New Delhi, India-(Your Reference B.1456)-Visit to New Delhi, Jan. 20th to Jan. 24th, 1947.”
32. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, “Proposed Accommodation for High Commissioner, New Delhi, India-(Your Reference B.1456)-Visit to New Delhi, Jan. 20th to Jan. 24th, 1947.”
33. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, “Proposed Accommodation for High Commissioner, New Delhi, India-(Your Reference B.1456)-Visit to New Delhi, Jan. 20th to Jan. 24th, 1947.”
34. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, memorandum from the Secretary to H. Rolland, Director of Architecture, Department of Works and Housing, Melbourne, and W. Haslam, Director of Works, Department of Works and Housing, Adelaide, 6 May 1947.
35. Pothen, “Diplomatic Despatches from New Delhi,” 51–53. The location of the proposed Australian block of land is not known.
36. Pothen, “Diplomatic Despatches from New Delhi,” 51–53.
37. Since taking up office in November 1943, Iven MacKay advocated for the White Australia Policy to be relaxed and modified to encourage the formation of a bilateral relationship with India. See NAA: A4231, 1946/New Delhi, Australian High Commission, New Delhi – Despatches 1–52, 1946. Also see NAA: A4231, 1947/New Delhi, Australian High Commission, New Delhi – Despatches 1–21, 1–58, 1947.
38. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from P. C. Spender, Minister of External Affairs, to A. S. Watt, Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 19 September 1950.
39. Alan Watt and the Australian Institute for International Affairs, Australian Diplomat: Memoirs of Sir Alan Watt (Sydney: Angus and Robertson in association with the Australian Institute for International Affairs, 1972), 274.
40. Alan Watt and the Australian Institute for International Affairs, Australian Diplomat: Memoirs of Sir Alan Watt, 274.
41. Stuart Harris, “Australia: Change and Adaptation in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade,” in Foreign Ministries: Change and Adaptation, ed. Brian Hocking (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999), 25.
42. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from R. G. Casey, Minister, Department of External Affairs, to A. Fadden, Treasurer, Department of the Treasury, 6 September 1951.
43. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, teleprint message from the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, to the Director General, Department of Works and Housing, 6 December 1951.
44. See James Broadbent and Joy Hughes, Francis Greenway Architect (Glebe, NSW: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 1997).
45. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from J. Kevin, Department of External Affairs, to H. Gollan, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, 28 November 1951.
46. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from J. Kevin, Department of External Affairs, to H. Gollan.
47. George Beiers, Houses of Australia: A Survey of Domestic Architecture (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1948), 20–21.
48. See Ron Robin, Enclaves of America: The Rhetoric of American Political Architecture Abroad, 1900–1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 63–88.
49. Robin, Enclaves of America, 77.
50. Robin, Enclaves of America, 79.
51. Robin, Enclaves of America, 85.
52. Robin, Enclaves of America, 142–144.
53. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, memorandum from F. Stuart to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 29 November 1951.
54. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, memorandum from F. Stuart to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs.
55. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from H. Gollan, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to J. Kevin, Department of External Affairs, 12 December 1951.
56. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, memorandum from H. Gollan, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, “Diplomatic Enclave-New Delhi,” 4 October 1951.
57. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, letter from C. Osborne, Commonwealth Department of Works and Housing, to Keating, Works and Housing Office, Australia House, “Proposed Building for Australian High Commission in New Delhi,” 26 March 1952.
58. NAA: A1838, 1428/32/4 Part 4, Premises Tokyo-Building Programme, 1959–1961; memorandum from C. Hartley to the Australian Embassy, Tokyo, “Embassy Compound,” 29 September 1952.
59. See, for example, “House at Pymble by McDonald Downie,” Architecture 38, no. 2 (April 1950): 60–61; “Country Homestead Near Gilgandra, N.S.W.,” Architecture 40, no. 4 (October-December 1955): 114–115; “Designed for Expansion, House at Turramurra, N.S.W.,” Architecture 41, no. 1 (January-March 1953): 10–11.
60. See Architecture 40, no. 4 (October-December 1952): 112; Architecture 41, no. 1 (January-March 1953): 2; Architecture 41, no. 2 (April-June 1953): 38.
61. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 3, Premises New Delhi-Building Project, 1953–1954; memorandum from J. Waller, Department of External Affairs, to the Director General, Department of Works, 27 October 1953.
62. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 3, Premises New Delhi-Building Project, 1953–1954; memorandum from J. Waller, Department of External Affairs, to the Director General, Department of Works, 27 October 1953.
63. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 3, letter from J. Waller, Department of External Affairs, to the Minister, “Australian High Commission, New Delhi,” 25 August 1953.
64. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 3, memorandum from J. Waller, Department of External Affairs, to the Director General, Department of Works, “New Delhi-Building Project,” 3 December 1953.
65. The Commonwealth Department of Works and Housing (CDWH) operated from 1945 to 1952 before being superseded by the Commonwealth Department of Works (CDW).
66. During his time in India George had designed Bahawalpur House (1927), Kashmir House in association with Lutyens (1929), St Stephen’s College (1938–1959) and the Tuberculosis Association of India Building (1950–1952). See Richard Butler, “The Anglo-Indian Architect Walter Sykes George (1881–1962): A Modernist Follower of Lutyens,” Architectural History 55 (2012): 237–268.
67. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 3, memorandum from the Official Secretary to the Secretary Department of External Affairs, “Building Programme,” 2 December 1953.
68. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 3, letter from Walter George, “3 Houses Australian High Commission New Delhi, Note on Drawings made in New Delhi up to January 1st, 1954,” 8 January 1954.
69. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 1, memorandum from F. Stuart, First Secretary, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 1 November 1951.
70. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/10 Part 1, New Delhi-Building Project, Chancery, 1958–1962; Building Programme: New Delhi Background Documentation.
71. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/4 Part 3, letter from L. Loder, Director General, Department of Works, to Walter George, “Australian High Commission, New Delhi,” 24 August 1953. The bungalows were completed in July 1955.
72. Watt, Australian Diplomat, 274.
73. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, New Delhi-Building Project, official residence, 1960–1963; letter from P. Sullivan, Property and Supply Branch, Department of External Affairs, to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, “Official Residence-New Delhi,” 15 March 1963.
74. See Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastava, India: Modern Architectures in History (London: Reaktion Books, 2015), 194, 196. The Ford Foundation had sent missions to India in 1951, after which it established its first foreign field office in New Delhi. In the context of tensions between the Indian government and the US over India’s non-alignment polices and relationship with Communist China, the Foundation aimed to supply India with technical expertise so that development programmes could be run and managed independently by the Indian Government. See Gaurav C. Garg, “Ford Foundation-India Relations in the 1950s: A Recipient Country Perspective,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 43, no. 6 (2020): 1045–1046.
75. See Lewis Mumford, “The Sky Line,” New Yorker, 11 October 1947, 99.
76. This exhibition was held at the San Francisco Museum of Art in September and October 1949 and was accompanied by the publication Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 1949).
77. Stephen White, Building in the Garden: The Architecture of Joseph Allen Stein in India and California (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 23.
78. White, Building in the Garden, 38.
79. White, Building in the Garden, 348–351. For a study of Stein and Polk’s work in India also see Scriver and Srivastava, India, 194–198.
80. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations, Residence for the High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, at New Delhi,” 20 June 1957.
81. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
82. For a discussion of Stone’s design for the US embassy see Norma Evenson, The Indian Metropolis: A View Towards the West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
83. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
84. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
85. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
86. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
87. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
88. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
89. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
90. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
91. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
92. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
93. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from Stein & Polk, “Design Considerations.”
94. As cited in Commonwealth Department of Works, “Overseas Projects,” Works Review 6 1965–1966 (1966): 29.
95. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from W. Pritchett, Acting High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, “The Official Residence: New Delhi,” 21 December 1962.
96. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from W. Pritchett, Acting High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, “The Official Residence: New Delhi,” 21 December 1962.
97. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, report from C. Teague, “Report on Overseas Mission for the Department of External Affairs April 29 -May 221,960.”
98. Unfortunately, no furniture schedule for the building was located within the sources consulted for this paper, however Philip Goad explains that the specification of Knoll furniture for Australia’s diplomatic embassies was “eminently suited to the spaces of diplomacy where the subtle suggestion of domesticity imparted understatement and invitation, a form of humane and not overbearing efficiency. It was a palette that spoke across international borders.” See Philip Goad, “Designed Diplomacy: Furniture, Furnishing and Art in Australian Embassies for Washington, D.C., and Paris,” in The Politics of Furniture: Identity, Diplomacy and Persuasion in Post-War Interiors, eds. Fredie Flore and Cammie McAtee (London: Routledge, 2017), 183.
99. See NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3, letter from W. Pritchett, Acting High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, “The Official Residence: New Delhi,” 21 December 1962.
100. NAA: A1838, 1428/19/5 Part 3 letter from P. Sullivan, Property and Supply Branch, Department of External Affairs, to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, “Official Residence-New Delhi,” 15 March 1963.
101. Plimsoll’s comments are found in NAA: A1838, 1428/19/10 Part 2, New Delhi-Building Project-Chancery and other compound development, 1962–1964; letter from J. Plimsoll, High Commissioner, Australian High Commission, New Delhi, to the Secretary, Department of External Affairs, “Chancery Project,” 11 October 1963.
102. See Rowan Gower, “Image Building: Examining Australia’s Diplomatic Architecture in the Asian Region 1960–1990.” PhD diss. UNSW Sydney, 2020.