Chandigarh – Living with Le Corbusier

Golden Jubilee
Groz-Beckert Asia Pvt. Ltd.
Chandigarh 1960–2010
Content
Dear Reader,
Groz-Beckert Asia Pvt.
Ltd. (GBA) – popularly
known as “Needle
Factory” in Chandigarh –
is the Indian subsidiary
of the world’s leading
manufacturer of knitting
machine needles and
system parts, Groz-
Beckert KG, whose headquarters
are in Albstadt,
Germany. Our Asian
branch is situated in
the Industrial Area of
Chandigarh. It is one of
the few international
companies that came
to Chandigarh about
half a century ago.
The company was
established as a joint
venture in 1960 and
started the first ever
knitting needle manufacturing
plant in India.
The factory became
a fully owned subsidiary
of Groz-Beckert KG in
1993.
Today, the company
also manufactures
sewing machine needles
in addition to knitting
machine needles, and
is a key element in the
global supply chain
of Groz-Beckert. It also
takes care of the sales
of a range of Groz-
Beckert products, which
include precision tools
and systems for knitting,
weaving, felting, tufting,
and sewing in India,
Nepal as well as in
Bangladesh. The company
serves a wide
spectrum of customers
with diverse interests
in textiles from haute
couture right up to technical
textiles.
As a socially responsible
organisation, the
company takes strict
measures to protect
the environment of the
“City Beautiful”. The
safe disposal of waste,
the plantation of trees
and the use of solar
energy, are just a few
of the many initiatives
taken by GBA.
The year 2010 marks
the completion of fifty
wonderful years of the
company in Chandigarh.
We are pleased to be
a part of this photo
documentation to
showcase this worldfamous
and unique city,
where we are proud
to have our business.
Concrete
Bricks
Trees
Preface
Prologue
Introduction
Essay
Essay
Essay
Interview
6
7
16
19
22
72
80
120
126
162
Clemens Kroll
Bärbel Högner
Arthur Rüegg
Picturing Chandigarh
Arno Lederer
Architecture and Imagination
Work Spaces and Public Buildings
Chandigarh and Le Corbusier
Housing Schemes and Social Infrastructure
Like a Foreign Country
Open Spaces
A conversation with M. N. Sharma
Nobody Wants to Leave this Place
Dr. Thomas Lindner Hans-Jürgen Haug Dr. Anton Reinfelder
President and CEO Executive Vice President Managing Director
Groz-Beckert Group Groz-Beckert Group Groz-Beckert Asia Pvt. Ltd.
Additional Captions
Glossary
Acknowledgements
170
174
175

Arthur Rüegg
Picturing Chandigarh
In the nineteen-fifties, many experts shifted their
attention to India, where a modern ideal city was to
become reality – and if we are to believe the key
art historian of the day Sigfried Giedion – in the form
of a major achievement by one single person:
“A town planner, an architect, an artist, a
sculptor, and a man with the grasp of a poet are
surveying a wide empty space at the foot of
the Himalayas. These five are united in one
person. There is nothing more thrilling for the
truly creative mind than to turn a dream into
reality here on this myth-soaked soil. To achieve
this, it may be worthwile to have accepted a
lifetime of humiliations.” 1
In 1947, Punjab Province was divided between the
now independent states of Pakistan and India.
Its old capital, Lahore, went to Pakistan. This painful
loss was needed to release the energy necessary
for the immediate establishment of a new capital;
a city looking entirely to the future. When Le Corbusier
and his team took on the job in 1951, a full and
detailed development plan was already available,
devised by American planner Robert Mayer and
his young chief architect Matthew Nowicki. They
had planned an organically curved street grid in
the tradition of Clarence Stein’s American garden
cities, with tripartite “superblocks” inscribed in
them. Then in August 1951, a plane crash removed
Nowicki from the scene in the middle of the job –
the first of a series of coincidences that lead to
commissioning Le Corbusier.
The quotation above from Giedion’s 1956 booklet
Architektur und Gemeinschaft, expresses the
enormous sense of anticipation associated with
the choice of Le Corbusier for Chandigarh. The
rebuilding of Europe was forging ahead at that
time, and “New Towns” and “Villes nouvelles” were
shooting up like mushrooms in the green areas
around London and Paris. Even the Swiss intelligentsia
dreamt of a complete new city in 1956,
which they wanted to build instead of the Swiss
National Exhibition in 1964. But the grand projects –
from Le Corbusier’s plan for rebuilding Saint-Dié
(1945/46) to the “Hauptstadt Berlin” competition
(1959) – all remained on paper. The star architect
had to use the case of Chandigarh to prove that
a city planned on the drawing board according to
the most up-to-date principles could be humane, fit
for use, and capable of development.
Le Corbusier apparently formulated his corrections
to Mayer’s master plan within a few days.
He introduced a neighbourhood unit of 800 by 1200
metres untouched by through traffic, the “sector”,
and replaced Mayer’s curved lines with an almost
right-angled street grid. He then superimposed a
free-form second network on this efficient traffic
system – the broad green swathe of Leisure Valley
and a system involving secondary access, footpaths,
and green spaces. Their irregular form was
intended to be adaptable to concrete needs and
at the same time symbolically illustrate the placid
life within the sectors as a counter-world to the
hectic street traffic. Le Corbusier himself retained
control over the master plan, and also sole responsibility
for designing the government district, while
a team of associate architects – consisting of
Pierre Jeanneret, his former office partner, and also
the English tropical specialists Jane B. Drew and
E. Maxwell Fry – was to build the majority of the
infrastructure and the residential buildings.
Even though the chief participants in the planning
euphoria were all aware of the legendary new
capital of East Punjab at the time, pictorial reports
from infinitely distant India were few and hardly
obtainable in the West. As late as 1953, all Willy
Boesiger could use to illustrate the new volume of
Le Corbusier’s Œuvre complète were the architect’s
sketches and plans. Despite this, Giedion still gave
his blessing to the Capitol government buildings
already in 1954, saying that they were buildings
“in which for the first time eastern and western
thought flowed into each other without a break”. 2
Giedion was not able to add photographs taken
by his assistant Dolf Schnebli in 1956 to his essays
until a few years later; these included the diagonal
shot of the High Court reflected in the pool, which
translated Le Corbusier’s canonical perspective
into the medium of photography.
In fact, the first important chapter in Chandigarh
photography was devoted to the heroic spectacle
of the building process, prehistoric-looking building
methods, and the principle architectural theme
of the government palaces – the monumentalisation
of the “archaic and the vernacular in terms of reinforced
concrete, the ‘terracotta’ of modern times”. 3
Endless processions of graceful basket-bearers
hauled in the building materials, which were then
dragged up to the heights by muscular figures.
Giedion recorded the fascinating element of this
building site with a single picture caption: “The
most recent building methods and the most ancient
methods of transport are coming together in just
the same way as the atmosphere of the orient and
its continuation with today’s imagination.” 4 Two of
the most important chroniclers of the early stages –
Lucien Hervé, Le Corbusier’s main photographer,
and Ernst Scheidegger, a member of the legendary
Construction site of the Secretariat,
Ernst Scheidegger, 1956
photographers’ collective Magnum since 1952 –
gave the astonishment surrounding the new capital
a carefully composed form as early as 1956: Hervé
in a special edition of the French architecture
magazine L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, and Scheidegger
with a “First report on the growth of the new
capital city Chandigarh”, 5 which was not published
until 2010.
Of course they both had the duty to provide
a traditional architectural presentation of buildings
that had already been completed, but Hervé in
particular was interested mainly in free artistic
expression. He had hoped to earn his living as a
realistic painter; now this self-trained photographer
strove to use patterns of light and shadow to
produce dense, almost painterly compositions.
Distorted views of buildings and plunging lines
often appear in his work. He also liked cropping his
photographic material; sometimes only a fragment
is to be seen, and cannot be localised without the
most precise knowledge of its precise context. In
contrast with this, Scheidegger was fascinated
by the “very photogenic” activities of the barbers
and greengrocers working in the open air, and even
more by outdoor classes in the recently completed
kindergartens and schools: here, “the burgeoning
city was most clearly in evidence”. 6 The German
photographer and social anthropologist Bärbel
Högner holds these photographs in high esteem.
In her view, Scheidegger’s pictures point particularly
to the aesthetic dimension of this ambitious urban
16_17
1 _ Giedion, Sigfried. Architektur und Gemeinschaft. Tagebuch einer Entwicklung, Hamburg, 1956, pp. 107/108; here as translated in: Giedion,
Sigfried. Architecture you and me. The diary of a development, Cambridge, Mass., 1958, p. 174.
2 _ Giedion, Sigfried. Space, Time and Architecture. The growth of a new tradition, Cambridge, 1941, 3 rd edition 1954, p. 539.
3 _ Moos, Stanislaus von. “‘Ruins in Reverse’. Notes of Photography and the Architectural ‘Non-finito’”, in: Moos Stanislaus von (ed.). Chandigarh
1956. Fotografien/Photographs by Ernst Scheidegger, Zurich, 2010, p 59.
4 _ Giedion, Sigfried. “Le Corbusier. Sein Werk und seine Bedeutung für unsere Zeit”, in: Schweizerische Technische Zeitschrift, no. 1/2, 1958.
5 _ Cf.: Moos, Stanislaus von (ed.). Chandigarh 1956. Fotografien/Photographs by Ernst Scheidegger, Zurich, 2010, pp. 216–263. This volume
contains outstanding essays on the planning history of Chandigarh (Maristella Casciato) and its reception in photography (Stanislaus
von Moos).
6 _ Scheidegger, Ernst. “Rückblick auf Chandigarh”, ibid, pp. 9 and 13.

Notre Dame du Haut,
Ronchamp,
Le Corbusier, 1955
But as viewers and visitors we do not see the
building as it has grown in its author’s eye. At first
glance we simply identify a detail, perhaps a latch
on the front door, before we take in the door itself.
Or maybe just the bell-push by the letterbox, before
we have a vague sense of the building’s size and
colour. Then, if we are impressed by the quality
of the detail, we may start to want to see more, to
verify whether all the other things in the building are
up to the same standard. Gradually, if our interest
is engaged, we make out the spatial structure,
discover how the house is organized and finally
whether the occupants have become “one” with
their habitat. By doing so, we have come to understand
the architecture in precisely the opposite
direction to its designers.
Photographs presenting everyday dealings with
architecture as the actual subject matter should
be understood in this vein. They are able to show
us whether and how people accept their planned
environment. In the nineteen-seventies, when
post-war urban development and architecture were
being criticized under the influence of Alexander
Mitscherlich’s writing and photographs of concrete
fortresses, and when suburban housing estates
were being published all over the press, it was these
images, rather than his essay that revealed just
how wretched things were. 2 They became a touchstone
for modern architecture, but also proof of
the alleged failure of Modernism in general. This
applied in particular to unduly rapidly built suburban
sprawl on the outskirts of big cities. Here
people were shown wandering through the ravines
of perforated façades as if lost, or parts of buildings
were presented that had come to look quite
different as a result of vandalism. But the pictures
also demonstrated that something must have
gone wrong right at the beginning of the planning
stage. Looking back, they present a very vivid
account of the above-mentioned viewer’s route
from a detail back to the concept or the idea hidden
behind buildings as such.
This was a bitter experience for architects,
above all for those that had committed themselves
utterly to Modernism. Not only were they affected
themselves, but so were their ideals, as embodied
by the truly great names – Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies
van der Rohe, Walter Gropius. Le Corbusier played
a crucial role in this scenario, being one of the
spokesmen for the Athens Charter, in which he had
adopted one of the most radical positions through
his urban visions. And finally it was also he, who
had provided the models for countless anonymous
dwellings of mass accommodation with his so called
Unités d’Habitation. After all Le Corbusier, alongside
Lúcio Costa, was the only Western architect to
achieve the creation of an entire city from scratch.
And so both these cities – Brasília and Chandigarh –
which incidentally scarcely anyone knew, tended
to be judged negatively in the last third of the last
century.
On the other hand Le Corbusier – regardless of
criticism of Modernism – was a source of enormous
fascination. He not only embodied the technocratic
position of early Modernism, but he was at the
same time, above all in his later work such as Ronchamp
or La Tourette, the “artist-cum-architect”
who drew on an enormous formal vocabulary that
did not match the “protestant” Modernism as
practised in Germany, for example. Le Corbusier
was not just the architect he is generally known as:
he also worked as a painter, sculptor, writer, creator
of books and – a photographer. He obviously did
not pursue this last activity without conflict, as
he was an enormously talented draughtsman. The
sketches prove in an exceptional way his enormous
skill at quickly capturing spatial situations. Thanks
to them and to his intimate mind and hand coordination
he achieved a kind of three-dimensional
reference work in which he recorded his early
journeys as lexical knowledge that could later be
called up as required. Sketching itself turned out
to be a process of questioning, or, as Geoffrey H.
Baker puts it in his book “Le Corbusier, the Creative
Search”, a kind of research principle. 3 Perhaps,
this was the actual reason that motivated Le Corbusier
to choose drawing over photography. Swapping
the pencil for the camera has been described many
times, most recently by Stanislaus von Moos: “So
I set the camera aside and picked up my pencil,
and since then I have drawn everything, wherever
I might happen to be.” 4 Albeit Le Corbusier is said,
as Beatriz Colomina writes, to have owned about
500 photographs taken by himself in between 1907
to 1912 alone. 5 Today, in the age of digital photography,
this amount seems small and is probably
just equal to the number of images taken on a
single day. But at that time, when roll film was still
the medium, it was an astonishingly quantity. It
must have been not just difficult to handle, but
Le Corbusier would not have been able to buy it at a
discounted price either. “The collection of pictures
from his entire lifetime is unimaginably large. Until
Charles and Ray Eames, no other designer was
to use photographs so often and in such a variety
of ways: taking shots, collecting, retouching, manipulating
…” 6
Notwithstanding, Le Corbusier would presumably
never have approved of a book presenting his buildings
unadorned, in other words without correction
and authorization. He would certainly have refused
what I described above as an approach from the
result back to the idea: none of the pictures of his
works taken by him or by one of the photographers
he rated highly showed the results of his work
openly and naturally. The pictures of Chandigarh
that we may find in publications to have received his
blessing look like delicately controlled stage sets,
surrounded by people in beautiful costumes draped
in front of the buildings.
Even so, photographs that choose not to use
arrangements are usually more effective. They
may show all the constructional faults and changes
that have taken place against the interests of the
architect. At the same time the mode in which
people have appropriated their new city in the case
of Chandigarh is essentially reassuring in Bärbel
Högner’s work. It reminds me of Hermann Hesse’s
fairy-tale “Die Stadt” (The City) in which the
engineer shouts “it’s going well” at the beginning,
and finally at the end, when the city has been taken
over by nature again, a woodpecker also shouts
“it’s going well”. 7 Likewise in Chandigarh – instead
of nature – the citizens have taken possession of
the planned city in their quite unplanned and natural
manner. The images in this volume show how this
city still functions in its own quite particular way.
Nevertheless they do not detract from the urban
and architectural concept behind it. For outsiders
they may in many cases be more inspiring than the
perfect architectural photographs that got past
the censor.
And maybe even Le Corbusier drew inspiration
from documentary images. In the early nineteenthirties,
Henri Cartier-Bresson took a photograph in
Madrid that involuntarily reminds me of Ronchamp:
six boys are standing in the foreground, right up
to the edge of the picture on both the right- and
left-hand sides. Behind them, in the gap that opens
up in the middle, a corpulent man with a hat is
walking through the picture, and finally children are
playing in the third layer of the photograph. The
scene happens in front of a white façade that is
pierced, as if randomly and yet in the most beautiful
arrangement, by small, deep-set rectangular window
apertures. Perhaps the link between Henri Cartier-
Bresson’s picture and the south façade of the
chapel in Ronchamp has already been described
elsewhere, but I have still to find it. However anyone
who remembers this extremely well-known picture
by the legendary photographer will be involuntarily
struck by the connection. Had this photograph been
a source of inspiration for Le Corbusier, one would
have the unique confirmation for the assumption
that pictures in the style of Bärbel Högner can be far
more stimulating than the perfect images architects
like to use to present the results of their designs.
Bärbel Högner does not show a carefully staged,
clinically pure architecture, set up according to the
rules of a still life. She is much more concerned
with the people whose homes are in Chandigarh,
who live there and follow their own particular ideas
about it. Her photographs capture the atmosphere
of spaces, and of everyday scenes that tell stories
of individuals appropriating the streets, squares
and open spaces. This quite different focus gives
her representation an astonishing variety, one
would not expect at first glance in this planned
modernist city.
Madrid, Spain, 1933,
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Notre Dame du Haut,
Ronchamp, interior
20_21
2 _ Cf.: Mitscherlich, Alexander. Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte. Anstiftung zum Unfrieden, Frankfurt am Main, 1965.
3 _ Baker, Geoffrey H. Le Corbusier – The Creative Search: The Formative Years of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, Abingdon, 2000.
4 _ Moos, Stanislaus von, (ed.). Chandigarh 1956. Photographs by Ernst Scheiddegger, Zurich, 2010.
5 _ Colomina, Beatriz. “Vers une architecture médiatique”. In: Le Corbusier – The Art of Architecture, Weil am Rhein, 2007.
6 _ Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity. Modern Architecture as Mass Media, Cambridge, 1996.
7 _ Hesse, Hermann and Walter Schmögner (illustration). Die Stadt. Frankfurt am Main, 1977.

Concrete
Work Spaces and Public Buildings
C H A N D I G A R H
since 1951
Educational Institutions_
_Capitol Complex
City Centre_
Sub City Centre_
_Cultural Complex
Sports Complex_
For the location of prominent
activities, Le Corbusier
had opted not
only for a spatial order
according to CIAM’s
functional concept, but
also applied his vision
of a city as analogous to
a “living body”. Accordingly
the Capitol Complex,
the administrative
district in the north,
represents the head
and the City Centre in
Sector 17 its heart.
The large educational
areas in the west and
the Industrial Area in the
east refer to the limbs,
while the parks are considered
the lungs. Lastly
the streets serve as the
arteries for this body.
They are classified into
the seven categories
V1 to V7 according to
their function, ranging
from interstate roads to
foot paths.
In his “Edict of Chandigarh”,
which Le Corbusier
wrote to create
awareness among the
citizens for the basic
planning principles of
the city, he emphasised
that Chandigarh was
planned “to human
scale”, providing places
and buildings for all
human activities to
ensure “a full and harmonious
life”. The City
Centre was designated
as a huge pedestrian
plaza, uninterrupted
by vehicular traffic
and the Industrial Area
was reserved for commercial
enterprises,
which would be powered
exclusively by electricity
to avoid pollution.
Certain important civic
areas in Chandigarh –
such as commercial
buildings along V3 major
roads – have to follow
an architectural control
that regulates the
designs to maintain an
aesthetical harmony.
When the construction
of Chandigarh began
in 1951 and the budget
was still tight, lowcost
materials were
selected for building
the new capital. Since
then, except for locally
produced bricks and
boulders and pebbles
from the nearby riverbeds,
it is the rough
surfaces of exposed
concrete that shape the
city’s visual appearance.
S . A . S . N A G A R
since 1966
Industrial Area_
IT Park, Manimajra_
P A N C H K U L A
since 1966
22_23

26_27
Village Kansal_North of Sector 1
View towards the Capitol Complex

Sector 1_Capitol Complex
High Court_Chief Justices’ Court
38_39

Sector 12
Chandigarh College of Architecture
Sector 12
Postgrade Institute of Medical Education and Research
60_61

66_67
Sector 17_City Centre
Construction of a five-star hotel
Rajiv Gandhi Chandigarh Technology Park
DLF Building

Bricks
Housing Schemes and Social Infrastructure
Phase II 1966–1990_
Phase I 1951–1966_
C H A N D I G A R H
since 1951
_Early Government Housing
Chandigarh’s master
plan is composed of
rectangular neighbourhood
units 800 by
1,200 metres in size,
assigned the function
of “living” in the city’s
concept. Le Corbusier
planned these basic
modules – the “sectors”
– as self-sufficient
communities, or, in his
words, “containers
for family life”, ensuring
that no one would have
to walk more than ten
minutes to reach a
centre where one could
service all of one’s daily
needs.
Access to the sectors
from the surrounding V3
major roads is restricted
to four entry points to
avoid heavy traffic inside
the units. Each locality
is divided by a green belt,
reserved for educational
as well as recreational
facilities. These open
spaces stretch centrally
from north to south,
allowing a full view of the
mountains at any time.
Along the meandering
V4 shopping streets in
the east-west direction
of the sectors, so-called
“markets” are to be
found. Most of the units
provide a social infrastructure
with schools,
dispensaries, post
offices and general
stores. In addition many
shopping streets have
developed their own
profile over time: certain
types of trades are
nowadays located in
particular units. Looking
at today’s map in detail
reveals a high density
of schools, local parks,
community grounds
and places of worship in
the sectors.
Right from the beginning
architectural and frame
controls were set up
to regulate the exterior
of both types of dwelling:
government housing
for the employees of
the administration and
private housing. While
concrete is an important
construction material
for public buildings to
this day, the housing
areas in Chandigarh
are mainly built of handmade
bricks. The prevailing
aesthetics of
variations “in brick” in
accordance with the
mandatory regulations
for the built environment
gave rise to the
label Chandigarh-Style
for the city’s distinctive
modernist look.
Phase III since 1990_
S . A . S . N A G A R
since 1966
P A N C H K U L A
since 1966
80_81

94_95
Sector 22
Shopping street

Sector 16
Government housing Type 5
100_101
Sector 14_Panjab University
View towards the shopping street

Sector 23
Sanatan Dharam Mandir
118_119

136_137
Sector 17_City Centre
Intersection with roundabout
Sector 26
Roundabout along V2 road

Sector 4
Rock Garden
144_145

Chandigarh Club,
founded in 1958,
Sector 1
people to make their mark, not to be stuck in a
groove, to do more and better, to show the present
age that a building can be depicted as of its time.
As architects we are creating history, so let us create
a history which will be inspiring.
I imagine, that your life must have changed, when
you took over from Pierre Jeanneret in 1964 as
chief architect. What did you feel and experience?
I did not know the responsibility, when I started
as chief architect. After Corbu’s death we had
to consider what was left to do, complete the unfinished
projects and at the same time move ahead
with new ideas and put into practice what we
had learned. It was quite a challenge, because at
the same time you had to justify what still had to be
done, retain the original character and rectify a
change, make standards for the future architects.
Now when I look back, I think, I went through a
fire and I wonder how I managed and why I had not
been afraid.
Shortly after you started your position as chief
architect, Chandigarh’s future as a capital was
uncertain, as the province of Punjab was to
be divided. Where you involved in that process?
In 1966 Punjab was split up again in India. At independence
it had been divided according to religion,
now this happened on the basis of languages. The
area left as Punjab wanted to have Chandigarh as a
capital for themselves, likewise the others. Agitation
went on and I was called to Delhi for consultation.
The home secretary was a very pompous man and
he said: “If you are to divide Chandigarh sixty by
forty percent to give one part to Harayana and the
Hindi-speaking population and the other part to
Punjab with Punjabi-speaking people, how would
you do that?” I was very blunt and said, I won’t do it.
I just can’t think about it. Dividing it will destroy the
whole city concept.
Chandigarh finally did become an independent
Union Territory. By that time the first phase of
the city had been completed, Le Corbusier
and Jeanneret had passed away. It might have
been an opportunity to undertake a big change.
Did you think of making a fresh start?
Not at all. I wanted to carry on in continuity with
the tradition of Corbu, respecting his ideas and
making progress as he would have done. Luckily
I enjoyed a lot of responsibility. We had to consider
densification in the second phase of the city.
Reflecting the social structure, I went for a cluster
housing type in the new government housing.
Sometimes it was quite difficult to hold Corbu’s
foundations, to maintain his monumental buildings.
One day, after I had just returned from abroad,
I was called into a meeting. Plans had been made
by engineers during my absence and all had been
settled to put two more floors inside the Assembly’s
lobby. I said that this was a crime and that I would
not agree. I explained why and finally they accepted,
but without my devotion and my power this would
have gone wrong.
We have already mentioned the ongoing
migration to Chandigarh. When you look at it
today, being on the threshold of one million
citizens, what are you concerned about?
The sacrosanctity of the master plan worries me
mostly. I constantly remind the administration to
take care of the needs of the city, not the “greeds”.
If they allow more and more flats to be built, if
instead of one family six are allowed to live on a plot,
you have a dramatic increase in population. Where
will the cars park, how will the schools, hospitals
and colleges cater? All open spaces will vanish!
Building more and more houses, but not thinking of
the infrastructure is not planning. You can see this
problem in other cities, where densification was
allowed without reflection: in Calcutta, Mumbai or
Bangalore, mindless decisions were taken without
consideration of the consequences. Balance is
needed; we have to share with each other and not
burden each other. Chandigarh should still be a
lighthouse for the rest of the world as an example
of good planning.
You are still very dedicated to the city, you write
in the press, you contact the high authorities
in New Delhi and you organise meetings of all
former chief architects to solve the pressing
problems of the city. What is your suggestion for
solving the problems?
Chandigarh needs to be redeveloped. It should
not be static, it should grow, but it should still be
world class. There should be a committee on a
high level in collaboration with people from the city,
to define the future – experts, like art historians,
architects and critics who understand Le Corbusier’s
philosophy, the Chandigarh concept and
the problems that arise from the changing social
and economic conditions. The city was once a
trendsetter, now it is a trend-follower: shopping
malls, multiplex cinemas and parking lots have
come. Many think that we should have a metro
transport system like in Delhi, whereas it would be
more economic and a real trend to create cycle
and pedestrian paths.
Is the way in which the modern technology
district, called IT-Park, located to the north of the
master plan was developed, a positive example
for you?
It certainly gives a chance to experiment with new
ideas, like using state-of-the-art materials like glass
and steel. I feel that people should get out of this
mold of Chandigarh architecture, with its confined
outlook. Chandigarh was not made for that. The
idea was to express a specific time, but not to stop
advancement. Some administrators here don’t
understand that if you are respecting too much, you
are neglecting progress. Corbu left a legacy, but it
is like with Buddha and Christ – now they are gone!
Luckily the old architect’s office was saved, where
we all worked together in the nineteen-fifties, and
where the senior team did their job. They left their
mark, but today some transition is needed. Let
new architects make new buildings and let us bring
back new vision in reality. Le Corbusier has left
something for hundreds of years, but blindly following
him is a misconception. He, himself, had an
open mind.
Once you told me, that Chandigarh was a combination
of great minds, great administrators and
the world’s best architects under the patronage
of great statesmen like Jawaharlal Nehru. Is
there something you would like to add to that?
It was also a combination of high ideals, high
creativity and the aspirations of the people. Though
the administration did not have much money, they
Punjab Capital
Project team
of architects,
engineers and
staff, about 1953
wanted to produce this city. The government was
shifted here within three years of our starting in
1951 and the city was inaugurated in October 1953.
This was tremendously fast, when thinking of
making each building manually. I think it was a big
opportunity, a challenge and a remarkable job done.
At the same time, the people who came had to
have faith in the city, so that it could become a great
city, of which the coming generations would proudly
look at something done by their forefathers. Slowly
I discovered that architecture is a way of life, not
just something fashionable about building here
and there. You have to do something with whatever
is available: the lifestyle, the neighbourhood, the
kind of trees. When you take everything under
consideration, only then you design something truly
applicable. It is not about the architect’s egoism
or a behaviour of grandeur, it is from small to infinity.
You have to consider on a time scale, what will
happen after 500 years, will it be useful, what will
people think of it? Will you leave a landmark, will
you be satisfied with it, will you be cursed at, or will
you be ashamed? People go to admire the Taj Mahal,
because they want to see what it stands for. And
this was the point to which we had to aspire in
Chandigarh. To achieve the total thing in perfection,
everybody had to participate, believing in it, to make
the future that we were trying to create inspiring
for the coming generations. And I dare say the
impact of Le Corbusier will never lessen with time.
He was the prophet of modern architecture.
Sharma-ji, thank you for sharing your views
with me.
“Old architects’ office”,
today Le Corbusier Centre,
Sector 19
168_169