Mahendra Raj

Mahendra Raj (1924 to 2022) was an Indian structural engineer who designed the structures of a large number of buildings in post-independence India. Born in Gujranwala in British-ruled Punjab, he earned a civil engineering degree with honours at Punjab Engineering College in Lahore in 1946, then joined the Punjab Public Works Department and moved to the Indian side after the partition of 1947. In Shimla he worked on housing for displaced families and began a collaboration with the architect Le Corbusier on the Chandigarh High Court and secretariat. After a master's degree in structural design at the University of Minnesota and work in New York, he returned to India and founded Mahendra Raj Consultants in Bombay in 1960. He worked with architects including Charles Correa, B. V. Doshi, Raj Rewal and Shiv Nath Prasad, contributing structural design to more than 250 projects, among them the Hindustan Lever pavilion and the Hall of Nations at Pragati Maidan in Delhi. His work is regarded as pioneering in exposed concrete construction, and he also helped draft the legislation behind the Engineering Council of India, created in 2002.