Habib Rahman (architect)


Habib Rahman was an Indian architect who worked on the Delhi Zoological Park, Gandhi Ghat and Rabindra Bhavan.

Biography

Habib Rahman obtained his Bachelor of Engineering in 1939 in Calcutta. He studied at the MIT and obtained his Masters in Architecture in 1944. From 1944 to 1946, he worked at the architecture firms of Lawrence B. Anderson, William Wurster Walter Gropius, and Ely Jacques Kahn in Boston.
Habib Rahman returned to Calcutta during the 1946 Calcutta riots and became the Senior Architect of the government of West Bengal from 1947 to 1953. Starting in 1953, Habib Rahman becme the Senior Architect of the Central Public Works Department in New Delhi.
From 1974 to 1977, he was Secretary of the Dehli Urban Arts. In 1977, he contract was discontinued after he opposed several projets including building a second Connaught Place in New Delhi.

Work

During the 1950s and 1960s, the Nehru government invited architects, among which Habib Rahman, to develop new public buildings built in the spirit of the independence of India. He designed the Gandhi Ghat in 1949 in Barrackpore, the New Secretariat in Kolkata, the Dak Bhawan in 1954, the Rabindra Bhavan in 1961, the World Health Organisation in Dehli in 1962, the Sardar Patel Bhawan in 1973. He also designed the National Zoological Park that opened in 1959.
He also built the memorials of Abul Kalam Azad, Zakir Husain and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed.
Habib Rahman's architecture mirrored the modernist ethos of the newly Independent India.

Awards

He was married to Indrani Rahman, a classical dancer.