Indian Parliament Building (Central Vista): Design Overview

Few buildings in India are photographed as often as the Parliament, and few are as rarely understood as architecture. Most people know the circular colonnade of the old Parliament House from news broadcasts, and the triangular new building from its inauguration in 2023, but not how either is planned, why it has the shape it has, or how it fits into the larger composition of New Delhi's Central Vista. For students of architecture and for anyone interested in how public buildings are designed, the two Parliament buildings offer an unusual opportunity: two answers to the same brief, nearly a century apart, standing next to each other.

This article is a factual design overview. It describes the planning, geometry and setting of both buildings using widely published information, and draws general lessons that designers can use in their own work — about plan geometry, circulation, chamber seating, symbolism and context. Like many large public projects, the Central Vista redevelopment was the subject of public debate and court proceedings; this article does not take a position on those questions and confines itself to architecture. Where exact figures are not reliably published, the article describes them qualitatively, and the plans shown are simplified diagrams rather than measured drawings.

The Central Vista: the setting

In December 1911, at the Delhi Durbar, it was announced that the capital of British India would move from Calcutta to Delhi. A new city was planned south of the old walled city, and Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker were the principal architects of its central government complex. Their plan was organised along a ceremonial east–west axis. At the western end, on Raisina Hill, stood the Viceroy's House (now Rashtrapati Bhavan), designed by Lutyens. In front of it, flanking the axis, were the two Secretariat buildings — North Block and South Block — designed by Baker. From there the processional avenue, then called Kingsway and later Rajpath, ran east across lawns and water channels to the All India War Memorial arch, now India Gate, designed by Lutyens and completed in 1931. In September 2022 the avenue was renamed Kartavya Path.

The Council House — the building that became Parliament House — was placed not on the main axis but to its north-east, off the end of North Block, on a site of its own. That placement explains why the old Parliament is a free-standing circular building visible from all sides rather than a façade terminating an avenue. The new Parliament building was built on a triangular plot immediately next to it, as part of the wider Central Vista redevelopment, which also included the redevelopment of the Kartavya Path lawns and a programme of new government office buildings.

The Parliament buildings through time

The circular Parliament House (1927)

The building now called Samvidhan Sadan was designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker as the Council House, to accommodate the legislature created under the reforms of 1919. Its foundation stone was laid in February 1921 and it was opened on 18 January 1927. After independence it became Parliament House, and it served as the seat of India's Parliament until 2023. Its most important room is the Central Hall, where the Constituent Assembly met to frame the Constitution of India and where the transfer of power took place at midnight on 14–15 August 1947.

Plan and geometry

The building is circular in plan, with an outer diameter commonly given as about 560 feet — roughly 170 metres. Its outer face is an open colonnade of 144 sandstone columns, which gives the building its famous appearance from the street: a continuous ring of columns that reads the same from every direction. Inside the ring, the plan is organised around the domed Central Hall at the centre. Three semicircular chambers were arranged around it, originally for the three bodies of the time: the Chamber of Princes, the Council of State and the Central Legislative Assembly. After independence these became, broadly, the Library hall, the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha. Between the chambers, courtyards and gardens bring light and air into the deep plan, and an outer ring of offices and corridors wraps the whole.

Materials and climate

Like the rest of Lutyens and Baker's Central Vista, the building is faced in sandstone in the red and buff tones that tie the government complex together. The deep colonnade is not only ornamental: it shades the outer walls and windows from Delhi's harsh summer sun, creating a band of shadow around the building — the same principle as the verandah of an Indian bungalow. The architecture combines a classical vocabulary of columns and domes with Indian elements such as chhatris and jaali screens, a hybrid that characterises much of New Delhi's official architecture of the period.

Why a new building was built

Over time the old building was extended and adapted for needs its designers could not have anticipated — far more members, staff and visitors, modern electrical, data and audio-visual systems, air-conditioning, and current fire and accessibility standards. The government's stated reasons for the new building included the need for larger chambers to accommodate a possible future increase in the number of members, modern services and infrastructure, and safety, including structural safety in seismic zone IV, the zone in which Delhi falls under IS 1893. Retrofitting a heritage building of this kind is difficult because services must be threaded through walls and floors never designed for them, and every intervention risks damaging the historic fabric.

The new Parliament building (2023)

The new Parliament building was designed by the Ahmedabad-based firm HCP Design, Planning and Management, led by the architect Bimal Patel, and constructed by Tata Projects. Its foundation stone was laid on 10 December 2020, it was inaugurated on 28 May 2023, and Parliament began sitting in it in September 2023. Its built-up area has been reported at about 64,500 square metres. It stands on a triangular plot adjacent to the old building, and its most distinctive feature — the triangular plan — follows the geometry of that site.

Plan and geometry

The building is organised as a triangle with three main components. The Lok Sabha chamber and the Rajya Sabha chamber occupy two of the triangle's sides, and between them, at the centre of the plan, is a large central hall known as the Constitution Hall, with a lounge and courtyard spaces around it. Offices, committee rooms, dining facilities and a library fill the remaining zones, with ceremonial entrances on the faces of the triangle. The geometry gives each chamber a large, regular volume while keeping the central hall equidistant from both — a modern reinterpretation of the old building's idea of chambers grouped around a central hall.

The chambers and their design themes

The Lok Sabha chamber seats 888 members and is designed around the theme of the peacock, India's national bird, with a colour palette and patterning drawn from it. The Rajya Sabha chamber seats 384 members and uses the lotus, the national flower, as its theme. The Lok Sabha chamber is designed to accommodate up to 1,272 members for joint sittings of both houses, a function that in the old building was performed in the Central Hall. Both chambers are much larger than their predecessors, which seated roughly 550 and 250 members, and both have desks equipped for modern voting, translation and audio-visual systems.

Beyond the chambers, the building's interiors draw extensively on Indian crafts and art from different regions — carpets, stone, woodwork and artworks — and the Constitution Hall is conceived as a space that presents India's constitutional heritage. Accessibility, modern fire safety and building services were integral to the brief from the start, which is one of the clearest differences from the old building, where such systems had to be added over decades.

Circulation: how people move through a parliament

A parliament is a building with several distinct populations who need separate but connected routes: members, ministers and presiding officers; parliamentary staff; the press; official visitors; and members of the public who come to watch proceedings from the galleries. Each group needs its own entrance, its own way to the chambers or galleries, and its own support spaces, while security screening must be possible without creating long queues. In both buildings the central hall acts as the meeting point for members, while galleries above the chambers serve the press and the public.

The old building solved circulation with concentric rings: an outer colonnade and verandah, corridors running around the plan, and radial connections to the chambers and the Central Hall. Ring corridors are easy to understand — follow the curve and you eventually reach every room — but in a circular plan they are long, and every room along them is slightly wedge-shaped. The new building's triangular plan uses its faces and corners for entrances and its central zone for the shared hall, so that routes from entrance to chamber are relatively direct. Whatever the shape, the general principle is the same one designers use in hospitals, airports and large offices: separate the flows that must not mix, make the main route legible from the entrance, and give each user group a clear destination.

What students can look for in the published drawings

When studying any public building from published plans and photographs, five questions reveal most of its design logic. Where is the main entrance, and how is it signalled from the street? What is the central space, and how does every other room relate to it? How does daylight reach the middle of the plan — through courtyards, domes, clerestories or atria? How are the large volumes, such as chambers or halls, structured and roofed? And how does the building's skin respond to sun and climate? Asked of the two Parliament buildings, these questions show both the continuity of ideas across a century and the differences that new technology and new requirements have brought.

Geometry as an idea: circle and triangle

Both buildings start from a single bold geometric figure, and both use that figure to organise a complex programme around a central space. The circle of 1927 is non-directional: it has no front or back, presents the same face to every approach, and suits a free-standing site. Its weakness is that a circle is hard to subdivide efficiently — rooms become wedge-shaped, corridors curve, and the plan resists later extension. The triangle of 2023 responds to a constrained site and gives three clear faces, three corners and a natural centre; it lets two large chambers sit side by side with a shared hall between them. Its challenge is the acute corners, which must be resolved carefully so that rooms there remain usable.

For designers working at a smaller scale, the lesson is that a strong geometric diagram is valuable only if it solves the real problems of the site and the programme. A circular living room or a triangular plot can produce memorable architecture, but every non-rectangular geometry creates leftover corners, curved joinery and furniture that does not fit standard sizes. Those costs should be understood before the shape is chosen.

Planning a chamber: seating geometry and dimensions

The legislative chamber is a specialised room, but its planning problems are shared by council halls, board rooms, lecture theatres and auditoriums: every seat must see and hear the speaker, every member must be able to reach their seat and leave quickly, and the room must feel like one assembly rather than a crowd. Legislatures around the world use broadly three seating forms — opposing benches, the horseshoe and the semicircle or fan. Indian legislatures, including both Parliament chambers, have used the horseshoe or semicircular form facing the Speaker or Chair. The figure below shows the general geometry with typical dimensions used for tiered seating with desks; it is a design guide drawn from standard references, not a drawing of either chamber.

Lessons for designers and homeowners

Very few readers will design a parliament, but the two buildings illustrate principles that apply to houses, offices, community halls and schools. The table summarises them.

Heritage, reuse and the future

One of the significant decisions of the project was that the 1927 building was retained rather than replaced. Named Samvidhan Sadan in 2023, it remains part of the parliamentary complex, and its future use has been discussed in terms of museum and heritage functions. For architectural conservation, this is the general principle followed for important historic buildings worldwide: keep the building, find it a compatible use, and add new capacity alongside rather than altering the historic fabric beyond recognition. The pair of buildings now stands as a record of two eras of Indian public architecture — one shaped by the colonial capital of the 1920s, the other by the requirements of a twenty-first-century legislature.

For students, the most useful exercise is to study both plans side by side: how each places the chambers around a central hall, how each handles circulation from entrance to chamber, how daylight reaches the deep interior, and how each building presents itself to the city. Those questions are the same whether the project is a parliament, a school or a family home.

Key design lessons, in brief

• Start from the site: let plot shape, orientation and neighbours guide the plan geometry.
• Organise a complex programme around one clear central space that everything relates to.
• Choose a bold geometry only if its leftover corners and curved spaces are planned for.
• Shade the building's skin — colonnades, verandahs and screens are climate tools, not just ornament.
• Design structure, services, fire safety and accessibility into the first concept, not as later additions.
• Size assembly spaces for sight lines and safe exits first, and decoration last.
• Express identity through craft and materials as well as form.
• Retain and reuse historic buildings wherever possible, and add new capacity beside them.

Frequently asked questions

Who designed the new Parliament building of India?

The new Parliament building was designed by the Ahmedabad-based firm HCP Design, Planning and Management, led by the architect Bimal Patel. It was constructed by Tata Projects and inaugurated on 28 May 2023.

Why is the new Parliament building triangular?

The triangular form follows the shape of the triangular plot on which the building stands, allowing the two chambers and the central hall to be arranged efficiently on the site.

Who designed the old Parliament House?

The old Parliament House, originally called the Council House, was designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, the principal architects of New Delhi. It was opened on 18 January 1927.

How many seats are there in the new Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha chambers?

The Lok Sabha chamber seats 888 members and can accommodate up to 1,272 for joint sittings. The Rajya Sabha chamber seats 384 members.

What happened to the old Parliament building?

It was retained. In 2023, when Parliament moved to the new building, the old building was named Samvidhan Sadan, and it remains part of the parliamentary complex.