New Delhi
1987-92

This new building for the British Council houses a number of diverse functions, including a library , an Auditorium, an Art gallery and the Headquarters of their offices in India.

These elements are arranged in a series of layers, recalling the historic interfaces that have existed between India and Britain over the last several centuries. At the farthest end is the axis mundi of Hinduism, a spiral symbolising  Bindu– the energy center of the Cosmos . The next nodal point , located in the main courtyard , is centered around another mythic image: the traditional Islamic Char Bagh, i.e. Garden of  Paradise. The third nodal point along this axis is a European icon, inland in marble and granite, used to represent the Age of Reason, including the mythic values of Science and Progress.

Presiding over all this in India herself, symbolized by the shadows of a giant tree, executed in a exquisite inlay of while makrana marble and black kuddappa stone.- the work of the British Painter Howard Hodgkin.