Joseph Allen Stein was an American architect invited to India in 1952 to head the Architecture and Planning Department at Bengal Engineering College in Calcutta. In India, one of Stein's major early projects was designing the town of Durgapur with American architect Benjamin Polk. Later projects Stein worked on in India included the India Habitat Center in New Delhi, designed to create a green and healthy urban environment. While Stein's projects in Delhi showed an influence of creating green spaces, the modern architecture in the rest of Delhi has tended to favor taller glass buildings that are not well-suited for the tropical climate.