In 1912 the British decided to move their Indian capital from Calcutta to Delhi, and Lutyens was selected to lay out the new city. Edwin Lutyens, the Edwardian architect, planned New Delhi as a brand new, grand imperial capital to match the architectural grandeur and vastness of Washington or Paris. He had on his team capable architects – including Herbert Baker (who designed the Parliament Building, and the North & South Blocks) and Robert Tor Russell (designed Connaught Place, the Eastern and Western Courts, Teen Murti House, Safdarjung Airport, and the National Stadium).

It took Lutyens 20 years to create a city with a new style of architecture, with valuable suggestions from Lord Hardinge, combining the neo-Classical, Mughal and the Buddhist and in the process he created his own hybrid style - the "Delhi Order" of neo-Classical columns that fuse Greek and Indian elements.

He built an imposing palace for the viceroy, now called the Rashtrapati Bhavan (the official residence of the President of India), the Parliament & the Secretariat (designed by Herbert Baker), the India Gate, Teen Murti Bhavan (earlier known as the Flagstaff House – the official residence of the Commander-in-Chief) and tree-lined boulevards dotted with distinctive white bungalows with colonnaded verandas and spacious gardens, for colonial administrators. The contrast with the crowded and narrow lanes of Old Delhi to the north was extraordinary. Only a handful of the sprawling, grand, white bungalows, popularly known as Lutyens bungalows, were in fact built by him. Most were built by lesser-known British and Indian architects. Many of these heritage bungalows have either been extensively modified or are in a state of disrepair. One of the Lutyens bungalows close to its original state is 10 Aurangzeb Road, once the home of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. "Its cornerstone was laid by Lutyens in 1920, but much of the design was done by F. B. Blomfield, the colonial architect who also designed the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi. The house is situated in the centre of a massive garden’ writes Jeremy Kahn. And this is a three-bedroom house!