India is a home to incredible government buildings and architectural masterpieces that have modernist, Vastu Shastra principled masterpieces, and both formally and functionally stunning buildings. The buildings are elegantly designed by the modernist masters Le Corbusier, and Louis Khan to the contemporary practice Studio, Lotus. The application of material genuinity, bold formal expression, functional fineness and, building performances are typical to the Indian government buildings architecture. Here below is a list with a brief and visual of the top ten selected impressive government buildings in India.
1. Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport – Terminal 2 | Government buildings
Location: Mumbai, India
Year: 2014
Architects: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport terminal two is a four-story terminal building designed with inspiration from the form of most traditional Indian pavilions. The terminal is located in a prominent location within Mumbai city and consists of an astounding central podium where the upcoming high tech and new global identity of Mumbai are celebrated. The building five times maximized the earlier number of passengers per year to thirty million and became the airport’s place as a preeminent gateway to India. The terminal has interconnected light slots and light wells to let lower floors access a good amount of light that rhythmically tranquilizes the inner spaces with the sense of the immediate Mumbai urban and landscape.
2. Krushi Bhawan
Location: Bhubaneswar, India
Year: 2018
Architects: Studio Lotus
Krushi Bhawan is a Government of Odisha’s Department of Agriculture & Farmers’ Empowerment facility building which is located in Bhubaneswar, the state capital of Odisha that is the third-largest contributor to India’s grain supply and home to agrarian communities. The Krushi Bhawan building has a social infrastructure ground floor as a free-flowing public space that opens out into a Plaza. The building as part of its design effort to fit the region’s climatic conditions consists of a central courtyard and a jubilant public plaza that is akin to form an informal amphitheater. The Krushi Bhawan portrays vernacular applications and Odisha familiar narratives through both building material usage and inclusion of skilled artisans to do contemporary art showing the agricultural folklore and mythological stories envisioned at an unprecedented architectural scale.
3. Palace of the Assembly | Government buildings
Location: Chandigarh, India
Year: 1963
Architect: Le Corbusier
The Palace of the assembly is an urban landmark of the city Chandigarh that is designed by the most celebrated architect Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier has successfully strived to show his architectural theories and concepts including the five points of architecture. The astounding application and use of diverse pilotis structures to weight the upper sag provides a free moving free ground plan. The assembly building offers a habitable roof as a means to juxtaposition an astonishing vista towards the Himalayan landscape and to compensate for the place removed by the building. Le Corbusier has applied a playful pattern and frame of free horizontal openings on the façade which also portrays eye-pleasantly tuff-designed free façade elements that are formed from the golden section.
4. Indian Institute of Management
Location: Ahmedabad, India
Year: 1974
Architects: Louis Kahn
The Indian Institute of Management is one of the notable works of the master architect Louis Kahn in India. He has designed a learning facility by considering classrooms and learning units as a formal setting and by successfully redirecting learning and education activities to the hallway and plaza. The building is made from locally available brick and concrete and a large façade abstraction which is akin to the famous Indian vernacular architecture. By doing so, Kahn is considered as a designer who renovated and transformed the way, learning, or education culture in this case, in which modern architecture establishes itself in one’s culture.
5. Jawahar Kala Kendra | Government buildings
Location: Jaipur, India
Year: 1991
Architect: Charles Correa
The design of the Jawahar Kala Kendra building is a building metaphor of Jaipur city and is originally derived from the plan of Jaipur’s city. The city of Jaipur is based on nine squares each representing the nine planets including two imaginary ones: Ketu and Rahu. The squares corresponding to real and imaginary planets become the symbolic representation of the setting. Each square has a mythical correspondence and quality association with the planet it signifies. For this reason, the building is referred to as double-coded in showcasing and aesthetically depicting a contemporary building based on an archaic notion of the Cosmos. The building has a large central courtyard and is enclosed with high parapets. Its façade is made from red sandstone that is inlaid in white marble and granite.
6. Chandigarh Secretariat
Location: Chandigarh, India
Year: 1962
Architect: Le Corbusier
Chandigarh secretariat is the largest and one of the buildings of the capitol complex in Chandigarh along with the High Court, and the Legislative Assembly. The eight-story building is the headquarter office for the Punjab and Haryana municipal governments. The Chandigarh secretariat building is the left edge of the capitol complex having a side length of 254meters and a height of 42meters. The horizontal concrete slab formed secretariat building, as part of the capitol complex, is designed to represent major functions of a state and democracy on which the master has shown his inside out potential of design and interpretation. Having a sculptural aesthetic on the façade, the building has many projections, recession and, multi-level interior spaces which crucially play a unifying role in the complex, which is symbolic of its administrative function.
7. VVIP Circuit House – I
Location: Pune, India
Year: 2014
Architects: Sunil Patil And Associates
Separated into two basic programs as guest suites and public areas, the VVIP Circuit House accommodates high-level government and political meetings along with a large number of visitors. The GRIHA Five star rated circuit house is designed to liberate government buildings from the existing design status quo and render the qualities of green application, efficiency, sustainability, and maximized performance. The building has a central, and focus point courtyard which is contemporarily designed with inspiration from the ‘old chowk’ of traditional Wadas of Pune. The combined vertical and horizontal louvers on the south and west sides of the building provide a notable thermal and visual comfort for the occupants. The circuit house building is one of the best government buildings in India with its high level and contemporary implementation of successful building performance maximization elements.
8. Parliament of India | Government buildings
Location: New Delhi, India
Year: 1927
Architect: Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker
Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker have designed the parliament of India, originally called the house of parliament, as part of their mandate to plan and construct New Delhi and to design an administrative capital city for British India. The parliament building is circular shaped and consists of 144 outside columns. The building consists of a large central chamber and three semi-circular chambers which were constructed for three other sessions. The building has twelve gates from which the first gate on the Sansad Marq is the main gate. The building is surrounded by large buffer gardens and is believed to be India’s place of highly regarded historic importance.
9. Government Museum and Art Gallery
Location: Chandigarh, India
Year: 1952
Architect: Le Corbusier
Designed by the celebrated architect Le Corbusier and his associate architects namely: Manmohan, Nath Sharma, Pierre Jeanneret, and Shiv Dutt Sharma, the government museum and art gallery was part of the master’s large urban development design for the city Chandigarh in 1947. The building is located adjacent to a city museum, another remarkable piece from Corbusier. The building has a square plan as of the Sanskar Kendra museum in Ahmedabad. The museum structure consists of reinforced concrete beams and thin round columns. The museum has three floors, connected by a pedestrian ramp, a service staircase, and a freight elevator. The brick façade of the building has a series of top roof-slabs that are capacitated with louvers designed to avoid excessive illumination levels on the artworks in the galleries whereas rainwater collected by the flat roof is stored in an array of pools.
10. Punjab and Haryana High Court | Government buildings
Location: Chandigarh, India
Year: 1955/56
Architect: Le Corbusier
The building is also called a palace of justice. It has an L-shaped plan and a long façade that contains the courtrooms of the high court. In addition to the North-West orientation of the building, the monumental and massive roof of the building protects the building and the courtrooms against the harsh sun and strong rains. The high court has a very eye-catchy and bright blended entrance which consists of three different and lit colored giant pylons which were designed to resemble the majesty of law and order.
