Joseph Allen Stein (1912–2001) was an American architect who helped establish a regional modern architecture in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1940s and 1950s, then spent most of his career in India. Born in Omaha, he worked for Richard Neutra before designing modest, low-cost houses in California. Investigated for his political views in the McCarthy years, he left the United States and in 1952 went to India to teach near Calcutta; in 1955 he planned the industrial town of Durgapur with Benjamin Polk. India awarded him the Padma Shri in 1992.
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His buildings in New Delhi's Lodi Estate earned the area the nickname "Steinabad", and Joseph Stein Lane there is the only road in Delhi named after an architect. The India International Centre (1962), beside Lodhi Gardens, was voted the best building in Delhi in a 2008 Outlook magazine poll of architects. He also designed the Triveni Kala Sangam (1963), an arts centre with galleries and theatres. The India Habitat Centre (1993), for the housing agency HUDCO and nonprofit groups, turned an office brief into urban design: five blocks linked by aerial walkways around shared courtyards.
