Benjamin Kauffman Polk (18 May 1916 – 23 April 2001) was a notable American designer and architect, best known for his work in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 and Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

. Polk was raised by his parents, Harry Herndon Polk (30 November 1875-28 August 1949) and Alice Kauffman (12 August 1878-30 July 1973) in Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa

Iowa

Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...

. He practiced architecture in San Francisco from 1948-1952, where he met his future wife and companion, Emily de Spain (née Isaacs ). The couple moved to India in 1952, where they would remain until September 1963. Polk designed both in the public and private sector. In 1955 he formed an association with another expatriate American architect, Joseph Allen Stein, later adding civil engineer Binoy K. Chatterjee, to form the firm of Stein, Chatterjee and Polk. Polk and Chatterjee left the firm in 1961, moving their new office to Calcutta named Chatterjee and Polk. Notable among his work include the Times of India main building, Buddhist Tripitaka Library in Rangoon, the Royal Palace

Narayanhity Royal Palace

The Narayanhiti Palace Museum, or Narayanhiti Durbar , is a palace in Kathmandu, Nepal which long served as a primary residence for the country's monarchs. Narayanhiti, in Narayanhiti Palace, is made up of two words ‘narayan’ and ‘hiti’...

 for His Majesty the King of Nepal, Kathmandu, and the beautiful Jallianwala Bagh

Jallianwala Bagh

Jallianwala Bagh is a public garden in Amritsar in the Punjab province of India, and houses a memorial of national importance, established in 1951 to commemorate the murder of peaceful celebrators on the occasion of the Punjabi New Year on April 13, 1919 in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre...

 Memorial in Amritsar

Amritsar

Amritsar is a city in the northern part of India and is the administrative headquarters of Amritsar district in the state of Punjab, India. The 2001 Indian census reported the population of the city to be over 1,500,000, with that of the entire district numbering 3,695,077...

. In all these projects he was assisted by eminent Indian architect Suraj P Subherwal. Suraj P. Subherwal, later, won a National Architectural Competition to become Architect of XXXVIII International Eucharistic Congress held at Bombay in December 1964 and attended by His Holiness Pope Paul VI. Polk returned to the United States in 1968, where he took up teaching architecture at the California Polytechnic University

California Polytechnic State University

California Polytechnic State University, or Cal Poly, is a public university located in San Luis Obispo, California, United States. The university is one of two polytechnic campuses in the 23-member California State University system....

 in San Luis Obispo, California. He was the author of several books, primarily concerning architecture, and most notably "Buddhist Monastic Architecture in Sri Lanka" and "The India Notebook," which he wrote with his wife. He died due to natural causes in 2001.