Private practice Following his studies at the Royal College of Art in London, he was articled to an architectural firm in 1887, though he departed shortly thereafter to establish his own independent practice. His early work, produced between 1888 and 1895, drew heavily on the traditional vernacular of Surrey buildings. A pivotal shift in his approach came with his introduction to the landscape gardener Gertrude Jekyll, who imparted to him the principles of “simplicity of intention and directness of purpose” that she herself had adopted from John Ruskin. He began his own practice in 1888, his first commission being a private house at Crooksbury,
Farnham, Surrey. During this work, he met the garden designer and horticulturalist
Gertrude Jekyll. In 1896 he began work on a house for Jekyll at
Munstead Wood near
Godalming, Surrey. It was the beginning of a professional partnership that would define the look of many Lutyens country houses. The "Lutyens–Jekyll" garden had hardy shrubbery and herbaceous plantings within a structural architecture of stairs and balustraded terraces. This combined style, of the formal with the informal, exemplified by brick paths, herbaceous borders, and with plants such as lilies, lupins, delphiniums and lavender, was in contrast to the formal bedding schemes favoured by the previous generation in the 19th century. This "natural" style was to define the "English garden" until modern times. Lutyens's fame grew largely through the popularity of the new lifestyle magazine
Country Life created by
Edward Hudson, which featured many of his house designs. Hudson was a great admirer of Lutyens's style and commissioned Lutyens for a number of projects, including
Lindisfarne Castle and the
Country Life headquarters building in London, at 8
Tavistock Street. One of his assistants in the 1890s was
Maxwell Ayrton. By the turn of the century, Lutyens was recognised as one of architecture's coming men. In his major study of English domestic buildings,
Das englische Haus, published in 1904,
Hermann Muthesius wrote of Lutyens, "He is a young man who has come increasingly to the forefront of domestic architects and who may soon become the accepted leader among English builders of houses".
Works The bulk of Lutyens's early work consisted of private houses in an
Arts and Crafts style, strongly influenced by
Tudor architecture and the
vernacular styles of south-east England. This was the most innovative phase of his career. Important works of this period include Munstead Wood,
Tigbourne Court,
Orchards and
Goddards in
Surrey,
Deanery Garden and
Folly Farm in Berkshire,
Overstrand Hall in
Norfolk and Le
Bois des Moutiers in France.
Munstead Wood, a house in Surrey, was designed by Edwin Lutyens and completed in 1896. It is considered the first project in which Lutyens fully expressed his personal qualities as a designer. The house balances the sweep of its roof with high, buttressed chimneys, and offsets small doorways with long strips of windows. The building established his professional reputation. Following Munstead Wood, Lutyens produced a series of notable country houses in which he adapted various historical styles to meet the requirements of contemporary domestic architecture. After about 1900 his style gave way to a more conventional
Classicism, a change of direction which had a profound influence on wider British architectural practice. His commissions were of a varied nature from private houses to two churches for the new
Hampstead Garden Suburb in London to
Julius Drewe's
Castle Drogo near
Drewsteignton in Devon and on to his contributions to
India's new imperial capital, New Delhi (where he worked as chief architect with Herbert Baker and others). Here he added elements of local architectural styles to his classicism, and based his urbanisation scheme on
Mughal water gardens. He also designed the
Hyderabad House for the last
Nizam of Hyderabad, as his Delhi palace and planned the layout for the
Janpath and
Rajpath roads. ,
Whitehall, London Before the end of
World War I, he was appointed one of three principal architects for the Imperial War Graves Commission (now
Commonwealth War Graves Commission) and was involved with the creation of
many monuments to commemorate the dead. Larger cemeteries have a
Stone of Remembrance, designed by him. The best known of these monuments are
The Cenotaph in
Whitehall,
Westminster, and the
Memorial to the Missing of the Somme,
Thiepval. The Cenotaph was originally commissioned by
David Lloyd George as a temporary structure to be the centrepiece of the Allied Victory Parade in 1919. Lloyd George proposed a
catafalque, a low empty platform, but it was Lutyens's idea for the taller monument. The design took less than six hours to complete. His design for the Cenotaph in Whitehall became a permanent national memorial. Its design incorporates subtle, non-straight lines—using entasis curves on the vertical surfaces and arcs for the horizontal planes. This deliberate geometry was intended to create an abstract, timeless form of remembrance, free from overt religious or figurative symbolism. Lutyens also designed many other war memorials, and others are based on or inspired by Lutyens's designs. Examples of Lutyens's other war memorials include the
War Memorial Gardens in Dublin, the
Tower Hill memorial, the
Manchester Cenotaph and the
Arch of Remembrance memorial in Leicester. Lutyens also refurbished
Lindisfarne Castle for its wealthy owner. One of Lutyens's smaller works, but considered one of his masterpieces, is
The Salutation, a house in Sandwich, Kent, England. Built in 1911–1912 with a garden, it was commissioned by
Henry Farrer, one of three sons of Sir
William Farrer. Lutyens heavily influenced
Sigurd Frosterus when he designed
Vanajanlinna Manor in
Finland. in Manchester, constructed in 1935|left He was
knighted for his work at New Delhi in 1918 The architect of the present
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, which was built over part of the crypt and consecrated in 1967, was Sir
Frederick Gibberd. In 1945, a year after his death,
A Plan for the City & County of Kingston upon Hull was published. Lutyens worked on the plan with Sir
Patrick Abercrombie and they are credited as its co-authors. Abercrombie's introduction in the plan makes special reference to Lutyens's contribution. The plan was, however, rejected by
Hull City Council. He was also involved in the Royal Academy's planning for post-war London, an endeavour dismissed by
Osbert Lancaster as "... not unlike what the new
Nuremberg might have been had
the Führer enjoyed the inestimable advantage of the advice and guidance of the late Sir
Aston Webb".
Overseas commissions Ireland (1906–1918) Works in
Ireland include the
Irish National War Memorial Gardens in
Islandbridge in
Dublin, which consists of a bridge over the railway and a bridge over the
River Liffey (unbuilt) and two tiered sunken gardens;
Heywood House Gardens,
County Laois (open to the public), consisting of a hedge garden, lawns, tiered sunken garden and a belvedere; extensive changes and extensions to Lambay Castle,
Lambay Island, near Dublin, consisting of a circular battlement enclosing the restored and extended castle and farm building complex, upgraded cottages and stores near the harbour, a real tennis court, a large guest house (The White House), a boathouse and a chapel; alterations and extensions to
Howth Castle,
County Dublin; the unbuilt
Hugh Lane gallery straddling the
River Liffey on the site of the
Ha'penny Bridge and the unbuilt
Hugh Lane Gallery on the west side of
St Stephen's Green; and
Costelloe Lodge at
Casla (also known as Costelloe),
County Galway (that was used for refuge by
J. Bruce Ismay, the Chairman of the
White Star Line, following the sinking of the RMS
Titanic). In 1907, Lutyens designed
Tranarossan House, located just north of
Downings on the
Rosguill Peninsula on the north coast of
County Donegal. The house was built of local granite for Mr and Mrs Phillimore, from London, as a holiday home. In 1937, Mrs Phillimore donated it to
An Óige (Irish Youth Hostels Association) for the "youth of Ireland", and it has been a hostel ever since.
India (1912–1930) , the home of the
President of India, was designed by Lutyens. Largely designed by Lutyens over 20 or so years (1912 to 1930), New Delhi, situated within the metropolis of
Delhi, popularly known as '
Lutyens' Delhi', was chosen to replace
Calcutta as the seat of the British Indian government in 1911; the project was completed in 1929 and officially inaugurated in 1931. In undertaking this project, Lutyens invented his own new order of classical architecture, which has become known as the
Delhi Order and was used by him for several designs in England, such as
Campion Hall, Oxford. Unlike the more traditional British architects who came before him, he was both inspired by and incorporated various features from the local and traditional Indian architecture—something most clearly seen in the great drum-mounted Buddhist dome of Viceroy's House, now
Rashtrapati Bhavan. This palatial building, containing 340 rooms, is built on an area of some and incorporates a private garden also designed by Lutyens. The building was designed as the official residence of the
Viceroy of India and is now the official residence of the
President of India. The Delhi Order columns at the front entrance of the palace have bells carved into them, which, it has been suggested, Lutyens had designed with the idea that as the bells were silent the British rule would never come to an end. At one time, more than 2,000 people were required to care for the building and serve the Rastrapati Bhavan. The new city contains both the
Parliament buildings and
government offices (many designed by Herbert Baker) and was built distinctively of the local red sandstone using the traditional
Mughal style. When composing the plans for New Delhi, Lutyens planned for the new city to lie southwest of the walled city of
Shahjahanbad. His plans for the city also laid out the street plan for New Delhi consisting of wide tree-lined avenues. Built in the spirit of British colonial rule, the place where the new imperial city and the older native settlement met was intended to be a market. It was there that Lutyens imagined the Indian traders would participate in "the grand shopping centre for the residents of Shahjahanabad and New Delhi", thus giving rise to the D-shaped market seen today. Many of the garden-ringed villas in the
Lutyens' Bungalow Zone (LBZ)—also known as Lutyens' Delhi—that were part of Lutyens's original scheme for New Delhi are under threat due to the constant pressure for development in Delhi. The LBZ was placed on the 2002
World Monuments Fund Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. None of the bungalows in the LBZ were designed by Lutyens—he only designed the four bungalows in the Presidential Estate surrounding Rashtrapati Bhavan at Willingdon Crescent, now known as Mother Teresa Crescent. Other buildings in Delhi that Lutyens designed include
Baroda House,
Bikaner House,
Hyderabad House, and
Patiala House. In recognition of his architectural accomplishments for the British Raj, Lutyens was made a Knight Commander of the
Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) on 1 January 1930. As a chivalric order, the KCIE knighthood held precedence over his earlier
bachelor knighthood. A bust of Lutyens in the Rastrapati bhavan is the only statue of a Westerner that was left in its original position in New Delhi. However, on 23 February 2026, this bust was replaced with the bust of
C. Rajagopalachari by President
Draupadi Murmu on the occasion of 'Rajaji Utsav'. This is an ongoing initiative by the Government of India led by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi towards "mental decolonization" of India. Lutyens's work in New Delhi is the focus of
Robert Grant Irving's book
Indian Summer. In spite of his monumental work in India, Lutyens believed that the peoples of the Indian sub-continent were less civilised and less intelligent than Europeans, although these views were common at the time among many of his contemporaries. He thought the Indian Indo-Saracenic style was "formless, not of carved decoration, an anathema...hardly qualified as architecture at all." Endless battles were fought between him and Viceroy
Hardinge over architectural style: Lutyens wanted classical, the architecture of the Empire – Hardinge wanted elements of the Indian vernacular for political and cultural reasons.
Spain (1915–1928) In
Madrid, Lutyens's work can be seen in the interiors of the
Liria Palace, a neoclassical building which was severely damaged during the
Spanish Civil War. The palace was originally built in the 18th century for
James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, and still belongs to his descendants. Lutyens's reconstruction was commissioned by
Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, 17th Duke of Alba. The Duke had been in contact with Lutyens while serving as the Spanish ambassador to the
Court of St. James's. Between 1915 and 1928, Lutyens also produced designs for a new palace for the Duke of Alba's younger brother,
Hernando Fitz-James Stuart, 18th Duke of Peñaranda. The palace of El Guadalperal, as it was to be called, would have been, if built, Edwin Lutyens's largest country house. , Marylebone, Lutyens's London home from 1919 to his death in 1944 == Personal life ==