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Chandigarh Ahmedabad – Le Corbusier
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12-28 maart 2010

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About Chandigarh
Chandigarh is a India's youngest city
- planned by the famous French architect Le
Corbusier.
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Capital of the States of Punjab and Haryana
- but does not belong to either of them. Instead, it
is...
A Union Territory
It means that the City is under the direct administration of the Government of India and not constituted as a
state with its own legislative assembly. A Union Territory in India is something like the District of Columbia in
the USA.
Chandigarh is known for :
.: Planning and Architecture
.: Quality of Life
.: High Educational Level
.: Pollution-free Environment
.: Low Crime Rate
.: Aware & Active Citizens
Population: In terms of population, the figures of the 2001 Census, it is clear that Chandigarh is
overwhelmingly urban.
Population Density: The urban area of Chandigarh is about four times more densely settled than its rural
area
Total Area of Chandigarh: Chandigarh's urban area is much larger than its rural area
Male/Female Population Ratio and Sex Ratio: Men outnumber women in Chandigarh. One reason for this is
that many men who are employed in the city find it more affordable or convenient to leave their wives and
children in their native village or towns.
Population Growth between 1991 and 2001 and Growth Rate: Chandigarh has grown very rapidly over the
past 10 years.
Total Literacy: Nearly 82 per cent of Chandigarh's population is literate. This is much higher than the national
figure of 65 per cent.
( All figures as per 2001 census )
CHANDIGARH (U.T.)
Figures at a glance - 2001
1 Number of districts 1
Total Rural Urban
2 Area in sq. kms. 114 34.66 79.34
3 Total Population
4 Decadal Population Growth 1991-2001
Persons 900914 92118 808796
Males 508224 56837 451387
Females 392690 35281 357409
Absolute 258899 25932 232967
Percentage +40.33 +39.18 +40.46
5 Population Density (persons per sq. km)

6 Sex Ratio (no. of females per 1000 males)
7 Population of 0-6 yrs*
Absolute
% of Total Population
8 Literacy
Absolute
Literacy Rate
9 Urban Slum Population
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7903 2658 10194
773 621 792
Persons 109293 14007 95286
Males 59238 7562 51676
Females 50055 6445 43610
Persons 12.13 15.21 11.78
Males 11.66 13.30 11.45
Females 12.75 18.27 12.20
Persons 647208 59547 587661
Males 384563 40178 344385
Females 262645 19369 243276
Persons 81.76 76.23 82.36
Males 85.65 81.54 86.16
Females 76.65 67.17 77.53
* 6 yrs means completed 6 years as on 1.3.2001
Total Rural Urban
Persons 107098 - 107098
Males 62747 - 62747
Females 44351 - 44351
10 Sex Ratio of Urban Slum Population - - 707
11 Slum Population of 0-6 yrs
Absolute
% of Total Population
12 Slum Literacy
Absolute
Persons 21777 - 21777
Males 11321 - 11321
Females 10456 - 10456
Persons 20.33 - 20.33
Males 18.04 - 18.04
Females 23.58 - 23.58
Persons 47317 - 47317

Literacy Rate
Chandigarh Map
Males 33730 - 33730
Females 13587 - 13587
Persons 55.46 - 55.46
Males 65.59 - 65.59
Females 40.09 - 40.09
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Historical Background
GENESIS OF THE CITY
India attained Independence in 1947; but in the process the territory of British India was partitioned to form
India and Pakistan. The large and prosperous Province of Punjab, was divided and Lahore, its capital, fell
within the borders of Pakistan, leaving Indian Punjab without a capital. The loss of Lahore, a city much loved
by its inhabitants, was keenly felt by those who had been compelled to migrate to India. In March, 1948, the
Government of Punjab in consultation with the Government of India, approved a 114.59 sq. km tract of land at
the foot of the Shivalik Hills in Ropar district as the site of the new capital. An existing village gave its name
(Chandi - Goddess of Power + garh - fortress) to the new city.
The decision to build a new city seemed like an extravagant decision to some at the time, but there were
practical justifications. After partition, the population of all the existing towns in East Punjab had more than
doubled on account of the migration of displaced persons from Pakistan. As a government publication pointed
out: "Most of these towns, even before partition, lacked essential amenities such as adequate drainage and
water supply and none of them had schools or hospitals which could meet the normal needs of the population
according to modern standards for such services."
The new city was needed not only to serve as a capital but also to resettle thousands of refugees who had
been uprooted from West Punjab. India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru enthusiastically supported the
project and look sustained interest in its execution. When he visited the project on April 2, 1952, he declared:
"Let this be a new town symbolic of the freedom of India, unfettered by the traditions of the past, an
expression of the nation's faith in the future....The new capital of Punjab will be christened as Chandigarh-a
name symbolic of the valiant spirit of the Punjabis. Chandigarh is rightly associated with the name of Goddess
Chandi -- Shakti, or power."
THE SITE
After an extensive aerial survey, then the Capital Project Administrator, P.N. Thapar and Chief Engineer, P.L.
Verma selected the site -- a sub-mountainous area of the then Ambala district about 240 km north of New
Delhi, the capital of the republic. The area was a flat, gently sloping plain of agricultural land dotted with
groves of mango trees which marked the sites of 24 villages or hamlets -- one of which was named
Chandigarh on account of its temple dedicated to the goddess.
The general ground level of the site ranges from 305 to 366 meters with a 1 per cent grade giving adequate
drainage. To the northeast are the foothills of the Himalayas -- the Shivalik Range -- rising abruptly to about
1524 meters and a dramatic natural backdrop. One seasonal stream, the Patiali ki Rao, lies on the western
side of the city and another, the Sukhna Choe, on the eastern side. A third, smaller seasonal stream flows
through the very center of Chandigarh. The area along this streambed has been turned into a series of public
gardens called the Leisure Valley.
THE AMERICAN ARCHITECTS AND PLANNERS
Although the city is now forever linked with the name of Le Corbusier, he was not the Government of India's
"first choice". In the late 1940's very few Indian architects were professionally trained in town planning so it
was necessary to look abroad for a man to carry out the Chandigarh scheme. The search led to the USA and
Albert Mayer. Graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founder of the large New York
architectural firm of Mayer, Whittlesey and Glass, he was highly qualified for the job. Not only was he
experienced, he was associated with American architects and thinkers Lewis Mumford and Clarence Stein.
Mayer wasn't new to India. As a lieutenant colonel in the US Army, he had served in India during World War II,
building airfields in Bengal and the Burma-India theatre. He liked India -- in fact, just after independence he
sent Nehru the outline of a program for model villages. In December, 1949, when the Punjab government
approached him for the Chandigarh project, he was already associated with a rural development project at
Etawah (Uttar Pradesh), and preparation of master-plans for Greater Bombay and Kanpur.
Mayer was thrilled with the prospect of planning a brand-new city, and he accepted the assignment although it
offered him a modest fee of $30,000 for the entire project. His brief was to prepare a master plan for a city of
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half a million people, showing the location of major roads and areas for residence, business, industry,
recreation and allied uses. He was also to prepare detailed building plans for the Capitol Complex, City
Centre, and important government facilities and architectural controls for other areas.
Acutely aware of the myriad needs of a modern metropolis, Mayer included several American experts in the
project: James Buckley, a specialist in the field of economics and transport; Ralph Eberl, an expert on city
services, roads and site engineering; H.E. Landsberg, a climatologist; and Clara Coffey, a specialist in
landscaping. Later, on the advice of his friend Stein, Mayer inducted Matthew Nowicki. Nowicki was the head
of the North Carolina State College School of Architecture. Soon, Mayer and Nowicki became the key
American planners for Chandigarh.
Mayer drew his inspiration for Chandigarh from a number of American residential projects, such as Steins
Baldwin Hills, in Los Angeles, California, which were in turn influenced by the 19th century Garden City
Movement of English architect Ebenezer Howard. Howard's idea was to counteract the disadvantages of the
sprawling industrial towns by creating self-sufficient cities restricted in size and surrounded by green belts,
which would have the advantages of both town and country.
Soon after his appointment in 1950, Mayer wrote to Nehru: "I feel in all solemnity that this will be a source of
great stimulation to city building and replanning in India -- it will be the synthesis and integration in the world to
date of all that has been learned and talked of in planning over the past 30 years. Yet, I feel we have been
able to make it strongly Indian in feeling and function as well as modern."
According to Ravi Kalia, "The master plan Mayer produced was based on two principles, both of which were
widely prevalent at the time in America. First, the basic unit was to be the neighbourhood, the groupings and
the variations of which were synthesized in the city. Second, the elements of site, topography, and location in
the region were to determine the overall character of the city -- the road system, the location of the main
architectural and functional foci, the park system and so forth. "As a third consideration, the plan was to give
sufficient importance to direct observations of the region and its people. The plan had to provide for locally
heavy bicycle traffic, schools of different sizes, the main business district, and other needs. However, absence
of any substantial scientific, statistical and demographic data was to remain an inherent drawback for the
planners."
The master plan as conceived by Mayer and Nowicki assumed a fan-shaped outline spreading gently to fill the
site between two seasonal riverbeds. At the head of the plan was the Capitol , the seat of the state
government, and the City Centre was located in the heart of the city. Two linear parklands could also be
noticed running continuously from the northeast head of the plain to its southwestern tip. A curving network of
main roads surrounded the neighborhood units called Superblocks. The first phase of the city was to be
developed on the northeastern side to accommodate 150,000 residents and the second phase on the
southwestern side for another 350,000 people.
The plan, which reflected the American architects' desire to deliberately avoid the sterility of a geometric grid
in favour of a loosely curving system, certainly had the overtones of the "romantic picturesque" tradition of a
Garden City. In addition, Mayer and Nowicki produced conceptual schemes for the Capitol, superblock and
the City Centre.
The proposed Superblocks were to be graded income wise in three density categories: 10, 30 and 40 persons
per hectare. Mayer wanted a more democratic mix of housing types, and felt that the old practice of providing
palatial bungalows for the elite needed rethinking as the services and open space provided to them would be
at the expense of the have-nots living in the smaller houses. He also desired that most houses in the
neighbourhood units should be located on the periphery, so that the central areas were left for playgrounds,
parks and recreational areas.
Mayer liked "the variation of [Indian] streets, offsetting and breaking from narrow into wider and back" and
thought that they were appropriate to a land of strong sunlight, At the narrow points, his house design involved
an inner courtyard for ventilation with small openings on the street side to protect privacy. "We loved this little
inner courtyard," Mayer wrote, "for it seemed to us to bring the advantages of coolness and dignity into a quite
small house." Another element in planning was "to place a group of houses around a not very large court, with
the ends somewhat narrowing, which could serve as a social unit -- i.e. a group of relatives or friends or
people from the same locality might live there, with the central area for play, gossip, etc." The neighbourhood
units were to contain schools and local shopping centres. (Kalia, Ravi, 1987).
The multi-mode transportation system was a major problem. Mayer tackled it by creating a "three-fold-system"
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that segregated land use in the master plan; there were neighbourhoods and areas for business, industry and
cultural activities. He also planned separate roads for incompatible types of traffic. Separate provisions were
to be made for slow animal-drawn carts, for bicycles and pedestrians. Also he proposed to have a
configuration of fast-traffic arterial roads with at least 400 meters distance between the two. He also favoured
use of cul-de-sacs so that pedestrians and cyclists could move on paths through parks and green areas. Land
was also to be reserved for future expansion of roads, parking areas etc.
The Capitol in the Mayer plan was located at the extreme northern edge of the city against the panoramic
backdrop of the Shivalik hills. Both Mayer and Nowicki attached the greatest symbolic significance to the
Capitol Complex in their architectural and visual impact of the built form of the city. The layout plan for the
Capitol indicated an monumental piazza containing the Legislative Assembly and forming a visual landmark to
which the Governor's Palace and the High Court were to be related on a visual axis. Broadly, it was a
composition based on a loose cross-axis which unified otherwise isolated structures were related by sightlines.
But a very interesting feature of the proposal was to dam the nearby seasonal rivulet of Sukhna choe
and use its waters for large reflecting pools spread around the entire complex -- giving the buildings an
ethereal reflective dimension.
Although Mayer's contract did not stipulate detailed architectural schemes, he felt that they could not isolate
two-dimensional planning of the city from its architectural character.
And it was left mainly to Nowicki his talented younger partner to sketch out conceptual schemes for the image
of the city. For the legislative assembly, he evolved a form that took the shape of a parabolic dome inspired by
the Indian stupa, symbolic motif of the sacred mountain.
Nowicki was keen to end all his modern architectural creations with the Indian idiom of built form. He even
endorsed the idea of the traditional home-cum-workplace of a small entrepreneur or artisan. His sketches
indicate typical Indian features such as shops with platforms to sit on the floor, and overhanging balconies or
awnings, with separate areas for hawkers. This house-cum-workplace had typical traditional features like
brickwork jallis and screens to shield the windows from the hot summer winds.
His conceptual sketches indicate curving streets, courtyards, and a delightful sequence of open and closed
spaces - with ample use of water and greenery to soften the built forms. Quite appropriately the building
materials of his choice was the good old brick, as it was the cheapest medium - a conclusion that holds true
even now (Evenson Norma, 1966).
Providence had different designs. On August 31, 1950, Nowicki died in a plane crash. Mayer felt that he could
not handle the monumental project alone and withdrew, severing the American connection with Chandigarh.
Le Corbusier's Plan
The city was still entirely on paper. To translate this dream into brick and cement, the government would have
to find another architect. The choice fell on Le Corbusier, an architect and urban theorist, many of whose
ideas were at variance with those of Mayer and Nowicki.The other important members of his team were Pierre
Jeanneret, Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew- and among the Indians notably U.E.Chowhury, N.S.Lamba,
A.R.Prabhawalkar, Jeet Malhotra, B.P.Mathur and Aditya Prakash.
Unlike Mayer, Le Corbusier had never set foot in India until the Chandigarh
project first brought him to the country in 1951. In February of that year Le
Corbusier and his colleagues camped in a rest house at what is now called
Chandimandir. In four days of feverish activity, they redesigned the city. The leaflike
outline of Mayer's plan was squared up into a mesh of rectangles. Le
Corbusier was ready to "come to grips" with the project. In his words: "To take
possession of space is the first gesture of the living, men and beasts, plants and
animals; the fundamental manifestation of equilibrium and permanence. The first
proof of existence is to occupy space."
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Although Le Corbusier made many radical changes in the Americans' master plan, incorporating his own
architectural and city planning ideas, it is a tribute to Mayer and Nowicki's vision that he incorporated several
of their seminal ideas. For example, the basic framework of the master plan and its components - the Capitol ,
City Centre, university, industrial area, and a linear parkland - as conceived by Mayer and Nowicki were
retained by Le Corbusier. The restructured master plan almost covered the same site and the neighbourhood
unit was retained as the main module of the plan. The Superblock was replaced by now what is called the
Sector covering an area of 91 hectares, approximately that of the three-block neighbourhood unit planned by
Mayer. The City Centre, the railway station and the industrial areas by and large retained their original
locations. However, the Capitol , though still sited at the prime location of the north-eastern tip of the plan, was
shifted slightly to the north-west.
The neighbourhood unit, so important to Mayer, retained its importance in Le Corbusier's plan. But the
opposing viewpoints lay in the configuration of the neighbourhood units. While the former preferred a
naturalistic, curving street pattern without the rigidity of a sterile geometric grid -- the latter was adverse to
"solidification of the accidental". For Le Corbusier the straight line was the logical connecting path between
two points, and any "forced naturalness" was superfluous. Moreover, Le Corbusier always looked at the city
plan in terms of a single cohesive monumental composition -- with major axes linking the focal points of the
city. The emphasis on visual cohesion between the various city components was an essential feature of his
somewhat rigid grid iron plan. (Evenson, Normal 1966)
BASIC PLANNING COMPONENTS
Le Corbusier's plan was based on the gridiron defined by a system of seven types of roads, which Le
Corbusier called the 7 Vs (from the French word 'voie') and their expected functions around and within the
neighbourhood. The neighbourhood itself is surrounded by the fast-traffic road called V3 intersecting at the
junctions of the neighbourhood unit called sector with a dimension of 800 meters by 1200 meters. The
dimensions of the sector and its creation are best explained in Le Corbusier's own words: "Its dimensions are
an outcome of studies made between 1929 and 1949 of the Spanish 'Cuadra' of 100 to 110 meters. A useful
reclassification of the (Cuadras) led me to adopt a ratio of harmonious dimensions and productive
combinations: seven to eight 'cuadras' on one side, ten to twelve 'cuadras' on the other, that is to say 800
meters by 1200 meters." And this was the "Sector" issued from an ancestral and valid geometry established in
the past on the stride of a man, an ox or a horse, but now adopted to mechanical speeds... The entrance of
cars into the sectors of 800 meters by 1200m, which are exclusively reserved to family life, can take place on
four points only; in the middle of the 1200 m. in the middle of the 800 meters. All stoppage of circulation shall
be prohibited at the four circuses, at the angles of the Sectors. The bus stops are provided each time at 200
meters from the circus so as to serve the four pedestrian entrances into a sector. Thus, the transit traffic takes
place out of the sectors: the sectors being surrounded by four wall-bound car roads without openings (the
V3s). And this (a novelty in town-planning and decisive) was applied at Chandigarh: no house (or building)
door opens on the thoroughfare of rapid traffic.
THE BIOLOGICAL ANALOGY
Le Corbusier liked to compare the city he planned to a biological entity: the head was the Capitol, the City
Centre was the heart and work areas of the institutional area and the university were limbs. Aside from the
Leisure Valley traversing almost the entire city, parks extended lengthwise through each sector to enable
every resident to lift their eyes to the changing panorama of hills and sky. Le Corbusier identified four basic
functions of a city: living, working, circulation and care of the body and spirit. Each sector was provided with its
own shopping and community facilities, schools and places of worship. "Circulation" was of great importance
to Le Corbusier and determined the other three basic functions. By creating a hierarchy of roads, Le Corbusier
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sought to make every place in the city swiftly and easily accessible and at the same time ensure tranquility
and safety of living spaces.
If "circulation" was the dominant function, then of all "bodily elements", it was the "head" -- that is the Capitol --
that most completely engaged the master architect's interest. Le Corbusier always looked for a chance to
make a dramatic statement: in the context of Chandigarh, that was the Capitol -- in this, the priorities of the
Indian government and Le Corbusier's natural inclination converged.
STATUTE OF THE LAND
Le Corbusier set out his principles in the now-famous Statute of the Land, which is reproduced in its entirety
here:
For the establishment of an immediate "Statute of the Land"
City of Chandigarh
I. Definition of use of Chandigarh
(i) Chandigarh is a city offering all amenities of life to the poorest of the poor of its citizens to lead a dignified
life.
(ii) Chandigarh is a Government city with a precise goal and consequently a precise quality of inhabitants.
On this presumption, the city has not to be a big city (metropolis?) -- it must not lose its definition. People say
that life must come in the city from other source or activity especially industry. An industrial city is not the
same as an administrative city. One must not mix the two. It seems that complement of the original definition
should be the invitation of forces which can supplement the forces of the city not opening a conflict or rivalry.
We must take care that any temptations do not kill the goal which was foreseen at the moment of the
foundation of the city. Therefore, naturally, old doors must be opened to actually unknown initiatives. It
appears that the future of Chandigarh will be opened to all the cultural factors in different kinds of
manifestation: teaching (school), university, new science of imparting audio-visual training etc, etc -- in one
word, all kinds of knowledge.
Means to express and to disperse thought (editions: books, magazines and eventually printing of books,
magazines, etc). Means to express and disperse arts (in time and space -- history and geography). All kinds of
reproduction of art-witnesses (editions: visual means -- photographs, diagrams etc at different scales). Diverse
manifestations of exhibitions, shows, theatre, festivals, creations of highest modernity etc. such manifestations
reclaiming the organisations and use of travelling, possibilities of hostelry, etc.
For the culture of the body there can be created an organism having as disposition any possibilities of meeting
for competitions or tournaments.
All this will afford the creation of a 'Chandigarh label' which will be the guarantee of quality and worth
emulation.
II. The Four Functions (CIAM, Charter of Athens)
The force of this Charter lies in giving the first place to the dwellings: the environment of living -- the family
under the rule of '24 solar hours'. The second place is given to working, which is the daily act of human
obligation. The third is the culture of body on one hand and an intellectual leisure on the other. When all these
goals have received their definitive containers, it is possible to give to each of them a respective rightful place
and at this moment can interfere the problem of realizing the contacts: that is 'circulation'.
III: concerning With this line of conduct, the urbanism of Chandigarh emerged. The date the dwellings was an
artificial one. The charter of 13 categories; the city arising is one of 2 1/2 storeys which has brought many
appreciable factors but which is now placed before the pressure of the city's development, it is: 'What will be
the future?'
Concerning working, Chandigarh being an administrative city, two centres have appeared: one Government:
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the Capitol Complex buildings and parks and its precise situation in the landscape. The second is the 'Town
Hall', placed in the City Centre.
What are the other workings? The one which answers to the possibilities which are listed in the paragraph (ii)
edition, festivals, etc. They ask for precise locations on the ground of the city. One part is already realised in
location and in buildings: the university and colleges and schools with proper zoning. (The principle being that
former are located in the green on the limit of the city and the latter located in the internal NE/SW belt of
green).
A small reserve of ground was given for an undefined industry east of the city near to the station. Very little of
this ground remains today available.
IV: Constituent elements occupying the ground of the city
1. The Sectors
2. The 7Vs, which are 8
3. The resulting geography: concentration and dissemination (in the city and out of the city)
4. Indispensable fact, unacceptable facts (their biology)
5. Statute of the Land
6. Augmentation (appreciation) in the value of land by clever methods.
(a) The key of modern urbanism is 'the Sector' which is a container of family life (24 solar hours: night and
day). The contents being from 5,000 to 20,000 inhabitants (approx.). Chandigarh has 30 sectors: each sector
has its maintenance organisations, the food provisions, the schools (kindergarten and primary) the necessary
artisans (repairs, etc) the daily leisure (movies etc) all traversing in the middle of each sector -- it is the V-4
(see below). The V-4 given the horizontal connection between the contiguous sectors. The sectors are also
specially devoted to all what concerned family life (Man, Woman and Child), day and night. The sector is
surrounded by high-speed roads with bus stops every 430 meters and giving the eight entrances in this social
group. The fundamental principle of the sector is that never a door will open on the surrounding V-3s:
precisely the four surrounding V-3s must be separated from the sector by a blind wall all along. In
consequence, the sector will never receive transit buses or cars. If there were today any actual organisations
which have broken this rule, it should be set right. However, the v-4 can accept the through passage of cars
and buses but only at low speed. Each sector will have a green properly oriented in the direction of the
mountain, constituting a band vertically connecting a series of sectors. In these bands will be installed the
diverse schools and the sports fields.
(b) The 7-Vs which are 8 It is the rule which was established before ten years at the demand of the UNESCO
to try to constitute an eventual acceptable proposition of urbanism for general world application. The resume
of these 7-Vs for this present report (which as to prepare 'The Chandigarh Statute of the Land) is the
following: Seven kinds of ways (which now are eight) can bring in the modern life the solution of contacts
between different organisms which constitute the containers of the activity of the machinist age. The V-1 is the
road which is going through the continents, traversing rural areas and cities. The V-2 take immediately the
succession of V-1 at the beginning of the city. Other V-2s can be the tracings of intentional municipal will of
greatness and usefulness together. The V-3s are a new kind of roads devoted exclusively to vehicular traffic
(especially fast traffic). These ways must be interrupted the least. They are surrounding the sectors as
explained above. The V-4 is the right place of the 24 hours life of a sector. It is a linear event and particularly
in Chandigarh. It should be situated on the shadow side (which is the SW side) The V-5s are roads which
assure the internal distribution of traffic inside a sector. The V-6s have to give access to the doors of the
dwellings. V-5 and V-6 must never receive a transit traffic (bicycle, cars and buses). The V-7 is situated in the
green ribbon going SW to NE in the direction of the hills. The V-7 gives the vertical contact between the
sectors and crosses the V-2 South and two other horizontal V-2s. We can affirm soon that the V-7 (for
pedestrians only) has to V-2 and V-3 with passeralles (footbridges) which can be made now or later
depending on the situation (conjecture). These bridges must immediately be drawn on the urbanist plans from
now on. The traffic of the bicycles, lambrettas, vespas, auto-cycles will have to take a separate way along the
green ribbon with the intention to realise the function of the bicycles in a modern city. These seven ways have
been named after the creation of V-7 because of the recent appearance of the cycle with the two wheels all
the world over. The two-wheeled vehicles have never to use the same way as the four-wheels and the threewheels,
Chandigarh is the first application of this new system of roads -- one must add that for the creation of
urbanism, drawings, discussions, meetings, this designation of V-1, V-2, V-3 etc has brought an extraordinary
clarity.
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(c) The resulting geography: Concentration and dissemination (in the city and out of the city) The "Charter of
Athens" of the CIAM has proclaimed the four functions of urbanism (as already given above). Each function is
to be contained in one container, it is one building. The first problem is to give the specific size of this building
according to each function. The modern life has to lodge all its activities in containers of conformed size:
'unities to grandeur conform' (for living, industry and for leisure, school, museum, etc. sports) Each of these
tools ('containers of conformed size') has to find their rightful place on the land. Their locations must be fixed
on the paper (plan) with their necessary surroundings. The contact will be given by direct or indirect ways
which have to be foreseen and fixed from the beginning. Some of these containers constitute a concentration:
the other dissemination. At Chandigarh the place was given to the family containers (the sectors); for the work
place was given the Capitol, University, City Centre, and a limited industrial land.
(d) Indispensable facts: Acceptable facts (their biology) The human factors must be put on the summit; it is the
relationship between the cosmos and man. Law of Sun is of the greatest importance. In Chandigarh, the Sun
must be controlled. So that the day hours can be employed for working. It is a technical intervention in the
domain of construction of dwellings and public buildings. The air, which will be breathed, is a condition of
human life. The problem of 'aeration' (breathing) is very important. The control of noise is to be introduced in
the urbanistic conception like in the construction of buildings -- specific technical problem. The three following
words express the problem to be solved: Air, Sound, Light.
(e) Statute of the Land: This denomination expresses exactly what is to be done. The duty of an authority is to
be honest; it is to control things which belong to a regime of rules (existing and understandable) which have to
be created by the will of a collectivity. In other words, there exists true merchandise, which has to be sold to
true customers, and which will never lose their primitive value in the case of arbitrary decision coming later. Is
it possible to conserve such realities during the time which is going on?
The Statute of the Land is the description of what is proposed and has to be proposed in the future and the
engagement of the authority that such realities will never be destroyed by inattentive resolutions or decisions.
When a national bank signs a paper (bank-note) promising that this paper has a value fixed at a figure printed
on it, it is impossible to change it except for an unexpected national or world catastrophe. The Statute of the
Land has also to include the date of the creation of the city as it has also to foresee some possibilities of
evolution or change which are hidden in the future.
(f) Appreciation of Land When such a working has been made in a city: Obtaining the money, buying of
necessary ground, first bye-laws, permitting to being construction, arriving of the first inhabitants, selling of the
first plots etc etc
A phenomena is born: it is the appreciation of the land. A game, a play has begun. One can sell cheap or at a
high price; it depends on the kind of "tactic and strategy" put in this operation. One phrase must be affirmed:
"The good urbanism makes money; the bad urbanism loses money". The problem is also to be vigilant: one
must sell a true merchandise; nothing must be allowed to provoke circumstances which will bring loss to any
single inhabitant.
One has the Statute of the Land. It is like a seed. What can be grown from the see? It is in the hands of the
Administrators.
LE CORBUSIER Chandigarh, 17th December, 1959
THE PERIPHERY CONTROL ACT
The Periphery Control Act of 1952 created a wide green-belt around the entire union territory. It regulated all
development within 16 kilometers of the city limit, prohibited the establishment of any other town or village and
forbade commercial or industrial development. The idea was to guarantee that Chandigarh would always be
surrounded by countryside.
Enunciating the spirit of the city, Le Corbusier said: "The sun, space and verdure are the ancient influences,
which have fashioned our body and spirit. Isolated from their natural environment, all organisms perish, some
slowly, some quickly, and man is no exception to this general rule. Our towns have snatched men from
essential conditions, starved them, embittered them, crushed them, and even sterilised them.... Unless the
conditions of nature are re-established in man's life, he cannot be healthy in body and spirit... "
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Le Corbusier's Works
THE CAPITOL
The Capitol is Le Corbusier's tour de force : he began to sketch the designs for the
Capitol buildings during his first visit itself, in early 1951. Like the Acropolis, which Le
Corbusier loved, the complex stands aloof and dominates the city. These geometrical
concrete buildings are intended to embody the essential spirit of the new city; the size
and solidity of the structures denote power -- the power of the people in a democratic
state. Le Corbusier devoted great attention to the placement of the various buildings
and other elements to avoid a static balance of rigid geometry but at the same time
preserve the alignment along a crossed axis and give the whole a subtle visual
cohesion.
The approach to the Capitol is through the vast
expanse of a part pastoral land part consciously
landscaped plain ending at the base of the hills.
The V2 stately avenue called Jan Marg leads to this complex as a
culminating focal point from the rest of the city. In contrast to the
panoramic Shivalik hills that form the most picturesque backdrop for the
Capitol -- the small artificial hillocks planned by Le Corbusier play a
delightful visual game of hiding and revealing the edifices from the rest of
the city. The vantage point for observing this designed visual drama is
from the Leisure Valley -- a central linear green belt.
In Le Corbusier's original concept, the Capitol was to consist of the edifices consisting of i) Secretariat; ii)
Assembly, iii) High Court; and iv) Governor's Palace. Besides these main buildings there were also to be a
number of monuments based on Corbusier's personal philosophy -- to adorn the piazzas and the open spaces
between the edifices.
However, the proposed Governor's Palace was later changed to a more democratic institution called the
Museum of Knowledge. Although all other structures of the Capitol have been built -- sadly the pivotal
structure of the Museum of Knowledge has still not been built, leaving Le Corbusier's great masterpiece
somewhat like an unfinished symphony!
The Secretariat
The first conspicuous building to come into view is the Secretariat -- the
largest of all from the buildings in the complex (254 meters by 42 meters).
Positioned at a sharp right angle to the mountain range it is designed as a
vast linear slab-like structure -- a workplace for 4000 people. An endless
rhythm of balconies and louvre on its linear facades punctuated in a subtle
way by a deliberately asymmetrical composition of brise-soleil (a sun
shading device), evolved by Le Corbusier in one of his earlier studies and
conceptual design of a skyscraper in Algiers in 1938. While a repetitive
brise-soleil clads the five bays of the linear facade, the sixth bay, which
contains the double-height rooms of the ministers has an asymmetrical
pattern. It's façade, besides the rhythmic brise-soleil, is also sculpturally punctuated by the protruding masses
of angled ramps and stairways. The roofline has a playful composition of a restaurant block, a ramp and a
terraced garden, to break the endless linearity.
Inside, each floor is organised as a long central corridor -- perhaps a very monotonous space visually-- with
offices on both sides. The windows on the exterior are in the form of fixed floor to ceiling undulatory glazings
and small aerators.
At present, the Secretariat is shared by the two states of Punjab and Haryana with their own internal
divisions.It is unfortunate that they have tampered with the external appearance of the Secretariat altering the
design described above (pictures).
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The Assembly
Close to the huge sunken parking area in front of the Secretariat is located the most sculptural and eyecatching
of all the geometrical forms of the Capitol the Assembly.
When Le Corbusier first arrived in Delhi, he saw the old astronomical
observatory called Jantar Mantar, built by Maharaja Jai Singh. Reacting to
its structures Le Corbusier recorded, " They point the way; bind men to the
cosmos... the precise adaptation of forms and organisms to sun, rain air
etc." The essence of these forms took seed in Le Corbusier's imagination
and later when he began sketching for the Assembly -- they were
manifested in his concepts. All the initial sketches
incorporated some form or the other of a tower
atop a cuboid building. But it was only on his fifth
trip to India in May/June 1953 that his vision of the Assembly got concretized. Flying
over Ahmedabad, he noticed the cooling towers of a power station. It was the shape
he had been looking for and accordingly a great hyperbolic drum, 39 meters in both
diameter and height was incorporated in the plan along with a pyramidal skylight
connected to the drum by a small bridge. Inside, the legislative chambers are
dramatically illumined with shafts of light. The building has two entrances: one at the
basement level for everyday use and the other from the piazza level for ceremonial
occasions through a massive entrance, 7.60 meters high and 7.60 meters broad, whose enameled door (a gift
to Punjab from France) translates a cubist mural painted by Le Corbusier himself. The door and many other
elements of the Capitol demonstrate Le Corbusier's predilection for melding art and architecture.
The large cuboid base of the hyperbolic drum contains the independent
volumes of the upper and the lower chambers -- now divided between the
Punjab and Haryana states as their respective legislative chambers. The
outer box acts like a container of two auditorium-like spaces used by the
two Legislative Assemblies. An irregular space between the two chambers
is a large lobby with sculptural lights designed by Le Corbusier. This area is
animated by the discussions of legislators during breaks in the Assembly
sessions.
The external facades of the cuboid base has rhythmic pattern of the brisesoleil
with its play of light and shadow on three sides. And on the fourth opening towards the large piazza
facing the High Court is a huge trough supported on massive pylons.
The High Court
The High Court is a linear block with the main façade toward the piazza. It
has a rhythmic arcade created by a parasol-like roof, which shades the
entire building. Keeping in view the special dignity of the judges, Le
Corbusier created a special entrance for them through a high portico
resting on three giant pylons painted in bright colours. Very much in the
tradition of the Buland Darwaza of Fatehpur-Sikri, this grand entrance with
its awesome scale, is intended to manifest the Majesty of the Law to all
who enter. Juxtaposed between the main courtroom of the Chief Justice
and eight smaller courts, is a great entrance hall. Its scale -- especially the
height -- is experienced most intensely while walking up the ramp. The
symbolism of providing an "umbrella of shelter" of law to the ordinary citizen is most vividly manifested here.
The continuity of the concrete piazza running into this space establishes a unique site and structural unity of
the structure with the ground plane. The massive concrete pylons representing again the "Majesty of Law" are
painted in bright primary colours and visually punctuate the otherwise rhythmic facade of the High Court. The
rear side of this ceremonial entrance for the judges is a working entrance and a large car park at a sunken
level.The massive piers and the blank end walls have interesting cut-outs and niches, to establish a playful
connection with the human scale.
Each courtroom was provided with an independent entrance from the piazza -- and the gracefully curving
overarching profile of the brise-soleil screen was intended to provide the symbolic protection. However, this
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"metaphor" of protection proved highly non-functional against intense summer heat and the monsoon rains --
thus requiring a single-storeyed continuous verandah running in front of them as a later addition.
Space for archives and library also proved insufficient, even after the open terraces of the library had been
taken over, so Le Corbusier agreed to design an unobtrusive, expandable annex to the north. The judges
declined to share the car entrance with the public so now the esplanade, where the pedestrian was to reign, is
a motorway enabling the judges to drive right into the entrance hall.
Colourful tapestries, one to each courtroom, cover the entire rear wall -- 12 metres square in the main
courtroom and 8 metres square for the smaller courtrooms. A number of symbols that encapsulated Le
Corbusier's view of man, earth, nature, the emblems of India and the scales of justice were depicted in
abstract, geometric patches. They were also required for acoustical reasons. These tapestry designs referred
to the architectural plan, in particular Le Corbusier's exaltation of the right angle as basic element of
architecture, and of order generally. The designs are based on Le Corbusier's Modular, which he used to
organise the entire Capitol Complex and give dimensions to all its buildings. He described the Modular as "a
modest servant offered by mathematics to people desirous of harmony, a universal tool for all kinds of
fabrications destined to be sent to all parts of the world. Furthermore, it solves by the decimal system the
inextricable manipulation of the inch-foot system, an ancestral and totally respectable measure. The Modular
is based on human height ... it places man at the centre of the drama, its solar plexus being the key to the
three measures, which express the occupation of space by its members." (cited by Prasad Sunand, 1987)
Monuments
One day in 1952 when the first drawings were being made, Jane Drew casually suggested to Le Corbusier:
"Why don't you set between the edifices of the Capitol some of the signs that you sometimes evoke and which
symbolise your strongest preoccupations?" Le Corbusier accepted the suggestion and so it was that besides
the three major buildings of the Capitol Complex, Le Corbusier planned a number of monuments along the
main piazza to activate and embellish its linear perspective. ( Evenson Norma, 1966)
THE OPEN HAND
The most significant of these is the Open Hand. Conspicuous by its scale, this giant
hand in metal sheet rises 26meters from a sunken trench and rotates freely in the
wind from a high concrete pedestal, conveying the symbolic message: "Open to
give, Open to receive". It is the official emblem of the city.
TOWER OF SHADOWS
MARTYRS' MEMORIAL
Le Corbusier's idea of the "24 Solar Hours" provides the impetus for this monument.
This is an interesting study of the movement of the sun. Here he explored various
shading devices and demonstrated "that one can control the sun on the four cardinal
points of an edifice and that one can play with it even in a torrid country and obtain
lower temperatures."
A memorial to the martyrs of the Punjab partition, consists of an enclosure -- where symbolic sculptures are to
be placed.
MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY
The Museum, located in Sector 10 in the cultural zone of the Leisure Valley
closely resembles the two other museums built by Le Corbusier -- the first
in Ahmedabad (1958) and the second in Tokyo (1959). The museum in
Chandigarh was completed in 1968, three years after the death of Le
Corbusier. All these museums repeat the from of a spiral within a square
box. The façade is clad in brick tiles. Officially named the Government
Museum, and Art Gallery it is a square 50 meters on each side planned on
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a grid system of beams and columns. The main building is divided vertically in three levels with heights of 3
meters and 2.40meters. The area is divided into double height and triple height spaces. The ground floor
(entrance, reception, lecture hall, cafeteria, workshop and storage) occupies approximately 2790 square
meters . A ramp leading up from the triple height entrance hall takes visitors to the main display gallery on the
second level, which covers an area of 2140 square meters. The building is designed to make optimum use of
daylight. This along with a system of top lighting, provides perfect illumination for the perception of art pieces.
Level Three (6041 square meters) houses the administrative and curatorial offices, research rooms and
library.
OTHER BUILDINGS
The Government College of Art is located in the Leisure Valley. Le
Corbusier prepared some sketches of what sort of building this should be
and how it should be composed with the Government Museum and the
earlier proposed Magic Box (the open air theatre). The plan is based on a
grid pattern. All the dimensions have been derived from the Modulor, Le
Corbusier's harmonic scale of dimensions. The roof has been given a
conoid form; it provides natural light to the interiors from the northern side.
The form of the roof not only serves the purpose of reflecting light to the
areas which tend to remain dark in the usual north light arrangement but
also makes a worthwhile aesthetic statement. A central courtyard is provided by omitting some of the grids
from the plan. It is the most useful space of the finished building. The exterior is a combination of brick and
concrete. On the south, which has the entrance vestibule, concrete brise-soleil in miniature suits the scale of
the building. The College of Architecture was designed by Aditya Prakash on the same pattern as the College
of Art. The Lake Club, set on the shores of Sukhna Lake was also designed by Le Corbusier. It is a low
building of exposed brick and concrete the entrance placed at a level below the line of view so as not to
detract from the view of the lake.
Living
Le Corbusier regarded the sector as the "key of modern urbanism, the
container of modern life". The population of individual sectors might be as
low as 5,000 persons or as high as 25,000 -- and even much more now.
The precise size of the sectors, 800 by 1200-meters, was no accident.
Between 1929 and 1949, Le Corbusier had closely studied the pattern of
the traditional Spanish Cuadra. which measured 110 by 100 meters. He
wrote: "A useful reclassification of them led me to adopt a ratio of
harmonious dimensions and productive combinations: seven to eight
cuadras on one side, 10 to 12 cuadras on the other. That is to say 800 meters by 1,200 meters. And this was
the "Sector", issued from an ancestral and valid geometry established in the past on the stride of a man, an
ox, or a horse, but hence to be adapted to mechanical speeds ..."(cited by Evenson Norma, 1966)
The sectors are vertically integrated by green space oriented in the direction of the mountains. Le Corbusier
envisaged the construction of schools and playing fields in these green belts.
Working
ADMINISTRATION & EDUCATION
Le Corbusier wanted Chandigarh to be devoted exclusively to administration and education; he firmly believed
that an industrial town did not mix with an administrative one. He supposed that the majority of the inhabitants
would spend their working hours in the Capitol,Estate Office or various other buildings occupied by
government departments , in the offices and shops of the City Centre or along Madhya Marg, or on the
campuses of the colleges and university, or in other research institutions.
INDUSTRY
Despite his bias against industry, Le Corbusier was persuaded to set aside 235 hectares for non-Polluting,
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light industry on the extreme southeastern side near the railway line as far away from the Educational Sector
and Capitol as possible. Of this, 136 hectares were to be developed during the first phase. In the event of the
city expanding southward, Le Corbusier suggested the creation of an additional industrial area in the southern
part of the city where a second railway station could be established. While the Industrial Sector is directly
connected to the civic centre by a V-3 road, a wide buffer of fruit trees was planted to screen off this area from
the rest of the city.
Plot sizes were laid out to accommodate both large and small establishments and were sold at auction,
subject to the restriction of industries considered obnoxious. Architectural controls were established regarding
the site coverage and materials of construction, ultimately requiring all plans to be formed in consultation with
the Capital Project Office. A maximum site coverage up to 50 per cent was allowed and in this area, 2.5 per
cent of the space was permitted to be used as quarters for essential staff. Sneh Pandit explains the rationale
for this: "It will indirectly force the industrialists to provide accommodation for labour and staff within the city
which is more desirable than their living in an exclusive area. In Sector 30, which is sufficiently close to the
Industrial Sector yet within the city, multistoreyed buildings have gone up to provide suitable tenements for the
workers. Later controls enforce that structures be made mainly in brick, allowing only 25 per cent area to be
plastered. Sloping sheds or sloping roofs are not permitted, so that the Industrial Sector conforms with the
look of the rest of the town -- although this in not adhered to in reality." Aside from Sector 30, eventually
sectors 28 and 29 were also set aside for industrial housing.
COMMERCE
The City Centre
The Jan Marg, culminating at the Capitol , is the main north-south axis of
the city; Madhya Marg, culminating at the Educational Sector, is the main
east-west axis. The City Centre was laid out immediately southeast of the
intersection of these two axes. It is one complete sector of approximately
100 hectares and broadly divided into a northern and southern zone. The
Southern zone has been developed as a centre of district administration,
containing the district courts and police headquarters, the fire station and
interstate bus terminus, while major commercial and civic functions are
carried out in the northern section.
Originally Le Corbusier wanted to raise some high-rise buildings in the City
Centre and made sketches for them. A slab-like office building and a hotel
in the form of a round tower were tentatively indicated. But "influenced by
the limitations of building materials and methods ... a uniform four-storey
height was however finally established for all buildings of the City Centre.
One exception was the Post and Telegraph Building, which, designed as a
focal point of the main intersection, would take the form of a 10-storey
structure." [ Evenson Norma,1966] This 10-storey post office was never
built. The Post and Telegraph Building was supposed to be designed by
Le Corbusier following the established module.
Lack of elevators, and the fact that Chandigarh lies in a zone of moderate
seismic activity dictated the four-storey height limit. The size of the buildings
was determined by what the planners thought the owners could afford. The
building form emerged from architectural control based on a standardised,
reinforced cement concrete frame of columns, beams and slabs, with room
for interior modification according to the needs of the owner.
Within the framework of architectural
control a number of variations were
permitted. One of the earliest buildings to come up was the branch office of
the State Bank of India, designed by J.K. Chowdhury. It expresses its
double-height banking floor by breaking the exterior verandah visually. Pierre
Jeanerret designed the Town Hall (now Estate Office) and it is distinguished
by a regular façade on one side and a series of overhanging structures on
the other which eliminated the need for verandahs from the second and third
levels. It produced the effect of a great colonnade along one side by a daring
use of Palladian columns. He also designed the T.S. Central State Library -- a four-storey module with a
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multiplication of levels in the stack area expressed on the outside in a series of string-courses.
In the case of non-repetitive buildings, such as cinema theatres, which would not ordinarily fit into the regimen
of the City Centre's architectural controls, a schematic design was produced by the Capital Project Office to
be adapted by the private builders.
Madhya Marg
While providing for a commercial heart -- Sector 17, the City Centre --
Le Corbusier also designated the northeastern side of the V-2 road
known as Madhya Marg as a commercial district. " Initially, Le Corbusier
had proposed to house the wholesale establishments in buildings which
would present to the street an unbroken brick façade. This was to be
pierced only by a central doorway leading to an interior courtyard on
which the offices and showrooms would face. These austere threestorey
blocks are intended to line the street as a terrace formation, on
the northeastern side, giving the effect of an unbroken wall. To the government officials charged with the
responsibility of approving the plan, however, this appeared a scheme not only lacking in visual appeal as
urban design, but also one which would fail to attract commercial users. As a result, the Capital Project Office
attempted a compromise design, in which the ground-floor would have display windows facing the street
behind a verandah. To achieve something of Le Corbusier's completely blank façade, and still permit a
measure of light and ventilation to a second level of windows on the front façade, a brick screen was extended
in front of the second floor at the outer edge of the verandah and continued to the upper level masking an
open terrace. The plan of this type of building provided for ground-floor showrooms, offices at the mezzanine
level, with a residence for the caretaker or manager at the top floor. To the rear of the block would be a walled
compound for storage and other purposes. It was intended that advertising signs would be permitted on the
exterior of these buildings. Their size, form and colour was, however, to be controlled. However many
deviations and changes have occurred in the present from the initial concept.
"In contrast to the unbroken building-line planned for the northeastern side of Madhya Marg, the buildings on
the opposite side were conceived as a series of identical, but separated complexes placed at an angle to the
street with a north-south orientation. It was decided that the new designs should be in harmony with the
existing structure, of the erstwhile Chief Architect's office building and as a result, the complexes consist of
single-storey brick level intersected by double-storey brick blocks and a single unit of four-storey height built to
the same pattern as the commercial buildings in Sector 17. A single business might own an entire complex, or
it might be subdivided among several owners." [Evenson, op. cit]
Sector Markets
Le Corbusier wanted to make each sector self-contained with respect to the necessities of daily life and
accordingly each sector was provided with a mini-commerical district of its own. Each sector was to have its
maintenance organisation, fire brigade, police, library, market, and the necessary artisans. These services
were set up in a line of 800 meters on one side (facing north) to avoid dispersion and frequent road crossings
as well as the sun's heat. Cars can take this road at a reduced speed and park there. This shop-street
continues into the neighbouring sectors on the right and left. "In this way is realised the continuity of needs
and resources of daily life and a connection through the whole town from east to west," Le Corbusier wrote.
Care of Body & Soul
Care of the Body and Spirit is one of the four basic functions of the city, according to Le Corbusier's "Statute
of the Land" for Chandigarh. It includes open green spaces and various structures which have come up in the
green areas.
OPEN SPACES
Some 800 hectares of green open space are spread over the approximately
114 square kilometers of the Capital Project area. Major open areas include
the Leisure Valley, Sukhna Lake, Rock Garden and many other special
gardens. In addition, the sectors are vertically integrated by green space
oriented in the direction of the mountains. Le Corbusier envisaged the
construction of schools and playing fields in these green bands.
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BUILT-UP AREAS
Various structures such as the Government Museum and Art Gallery, Museum of Evolution of Life and Fine
Arts College have come up in the Leisure Valley forming the cultural zone of the city. Le Corbusier also
allowed small nursery and primary schools and community buildings to be built in the green belt of the sectors.
LANDSCAPING
Landscaping proceeded side by side with the construction of the city from
the very inception. Three spaces were identified for special plantation: the
roadsides, spaces around important buildings, parks and special features
such as Sukhna Lake. In July, 1953, a Landscape Advisory Committee was
set up under the guidance of Dr M.S. Randhawa, later to be the City's first
Chief Commissioner and a man of versatile talents. Le Corbusier's
contribution to landscaping was of categorising tree forms. He made a
simple analysis of the functional needs and aesthetic suitability for the
various areas, devoting special attention to specific roads.
ROADSIDE PLANTATION
It was intended to have continuous, informally planted interior and exterior tree belts to
give a sense of direction and culminate dramatically at the Capitol. For the V-2
Avenue of the Capitol, Le Corbusier wrote:
"The Avenue of the Capitol consists of heavy traffic with a parallel band of parking, a
large pavement on each side and with shops and arcades and high-rise buildings.
Also outside this and parallel will be the eroded valley (which touches from time to
time). On the one hand, it seems useful to demarcate the highway by a border of high
trees and on the other hand to unite with one glance the entire width of the avenue."
"The V-4 will be the street which will give its own character to each sector.
Consequently each V-4 will be different from the others and furnished with special
characteristics because it is indispensable to create a great variety across the city and to furnish to inhabitants
elements of classification. All the possibilities of nature are at our disposal to give to each V-4 a personality
which will maintain itself in the whole width of the town and thus tie up five or six sectors traversed by a V-4."
"To specialise the character of each V-4 will be planted with trees having different colour, or of a different
species. For example one V-4 will be yellow, one V-4 will be red, one V-4 will be blue."
At present, the prominent flowering trees are gulmohar (Delonix regia), amaltas
(Cassia fistula), kachnar (Bauhinea variegata), pink cassia (Cassia Javanica) and silver
oak (Grevillea robusta). Among the conspicuous non-flowering trees one finds kusum
(Schleicheta trijuga) and pilkhan (Ficus infectoria) along V3 roadsides. These trees,
noted for their vast, thick spreading canopies form great vaulting shelters over many of
the city's roads. In all, more than 100 different tree species have been planted in (Fieus
religosa) Chandigarh .
March and April are "autumn" in North India. Trees such as pikhan, pipal kusum and
many more shed their old leaves creating a thick golden carpet that crunches
underfoot. This is also the time when the tall silk-cotton (Bombax malabaricum )trees
put forth their enormous red blossoms and the jacaranda appears like a wispy plume of
purple smoke. The mauve buds of the kachnar (Bauhinea variegata) attract not only for
their beauty but for their subtle flavour -- they are a traditional delicacy. Within a couple weeks, all the bare
boughs are adorned with tender, shiny new leaves in coppery, pale green. As weeks pass, the colour matures
to a dark green in preparation for the blistering temperatures of summer. When summer is at its hottest one
finds little colour in the flowerbeds, but the avenues of yellow amaltas (Cassia fistula) and gulmohar more than
make up for the lack. (Wattas, Rajnish, 1985)
The dry river beds of the Patiala ki Rao and Sukhna Choe were the focus of the earliest tree plantations.
Hardy species were planted down the entire length to mitigate the severe dust storms that ravaged the site in
summer. The areas were declared Reserved City Forests.
In 1952 the Tree Preservation Act was passed which prohibited cutting down, lopping or willful destruction of
trees in Chandigarh. Thanks to this timely Act, a number of native venerable, groves of trees have been
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etained in the city's green belts.
CITY GARDENS
While evolving the iron grid layout of the city, Le Corbusier incorporated an
integrated park system of continuous green belts from one end of the city to
the other, allowing an unobstructed view of the mountains. Pedestrian paths
and cycle-tracks were to be laid out through these irregularly shaped linear
parks to allow a person to travel the entire length of the city under a canopy
of green. The valley of a seasonal rivulet that ran through the city site for
about 8 kilometers with a depth of about 6 meters and a width extending to
a maximum of 300 meters, was imaginatively made use of. A series of
special gardens transformed the existing eroded area into what is now
called the Leisure Valley. Aside from this large chain of gardens there are many other gardens: some devoted
to particular flowers or flowering trees, others created as memorials and still others planned around topiary or
fountains. (For details about individual gardens, see CITY ATTRACTIONS, GARDENS)
SUKHNA LAKE
By making imaginative use of the waters of the seasonal rivulet, 'Sukhna choe', a large
lake has been created and named Sukhna Lake. The following dedication has been
inscribed on the concrete cube especially constructed for this purpose.
"The founders of Chandigarh have offered this lake and dam to the citizens of the new
city so that they may escape the humdrum of the city life and enjoy the beauty of
nature in peace and silence."
The lake club there provides facilities for water sports and other outdoor recreational activities.
An annual 'Shramdan' (voluntary labour) by the citizens is held to desilt the lake during the summer months,
when parts of it are parched dry.
Circulation
Le Corbusier's traffic system followed Mayer's lines but was more
elaborate; he called it Les Sept Voies de Circulation, or Seven Vs. The
rationale of his planning was the motor car. "From his early studies in
urbanism, Le Corbusier had identified the motor car as the central factor of
modern town planning. His initial, primarily aesthetic, quasi-Futurist
response to the motor car and to rapid movement in the cities had, by 1950,
metamorphosed into a theoretical solution to the problems of modern traffic
-- a graded system of circulation, from crossing continents to walking to the
front door. [As Le Corbusier put it] 'The 7 Vs act in the town plan as the
bloodstream, the lymph system and the respiratory system act in biology. These systems are quite rational,
they are different from each other, there is no confusion between them, yet they are in harmony ... It is for us
to learn from them when we are organising the ground that lies beneath our feet. The 7Vs are no longer the
sinister instruments of death, but become an organised hierarchy of roads which can bring modern traffic
circulation under control'." [ Prasad Sunand, 1987].
The 7Vs establishes a hierarchy of traffic circulation ranging from : arterial roads (V1), major boulevards (V2)
sector definers (V3), shopping streets (V4), neighbourhood streets (V5), access lanes (V6) and pedestrian
paths and cycle tracks (V7s and V8s). The essence of his plan for Chandigarh rests on preserving intact the
true functions of these seven types of roads.[For details see Le Corbusier's Statue of Land]
The entrance of cars into the sectors, which are exclusively reserved to family life, can take place on four
points only; in the middle of the 1,200 meters; in the middle of the 800 meters. All stoppage of circulation shall
be prohibited at the four circuses, at the angles of the sectors. The bus stops are provided each time at 200
meters from the circus so as to served the four pedestrian entrances into a sector. Thus the transit traffic
takes place out of the sectors; the sectors being surrounded by four wall-bound car roads without openings
(the V3s).
The road system was so designed that "never a door will open on the surrounding V3s: precisely the four
surrounding V3s must be separated from the sector by a blind wall all along." Buses can ply on the V4s, the
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horizontal connection between contiguous sectors, but not within the sector interiors. [ Evenson, Norma, 1966
]
Architecture Control
A defining characteristic of Chandigarh architecture is the use of building materials as they are -- brick,
concrete and steel are in no way disguised. An elaborate system of controls governs construction activity and
provides for a basic framework within which the architectural character of the city's built environs emerges.
HOUSING
Lower category residential buildings are governed by a mechanism known as "frame
control" to control their facades. This fixes the building line and height and the use of
building materials. Certain standard sizes of doors and windows are specified and all
the gates and boundary walls must conform to standard design.This particularly
applies to houses built on small plots of 250 square metres or less. All these houses
are built on a terrace pattern and while they are allowed a certain individual character,
the idea is to ensure that the view from the street, which belongs to the community, is
one of order and discipline. Individuals are given the freedom to create the interiors to
suit their requirements for dwelling, working, relaxing. All buildings along the major
axes of the city are brought under architectural control. A person building a house in Chandigarh must employ
a qualified architect and the design is submitted to the Chief Architect for approval. Particular scrutiny was
applied to residential buildings constructed along Uttar Marg (the northernmost avenue of the city at the very
foot of the mountains), those abutting on Leisure Valley and along certain V-3 roads.
COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS
All buildings located in the City Centre and commercial or institutional buildings located along V-2 roads are
subjected to controls. The system of the City Centre is based on a grid of columns, fixed 5.26 meters
shuttering pattern on concrete and a system of glazing or screen walls behind the line of columns. The interior
planning is left to the owners, and in the exterior, certain variations are permitted to give variety to the
architectural composition. Along the V-2 roads, other types of treatments have been evolved for facades. All
commercial buildings and all buildings constructed along the V-4 roads in other sectors are also under strict
control. For shops, complete designs have been provided from the inception of the city.
SCHEMATIC DESIGN CONTROL
In cases where special types of buildings occur in the architectural control areas, a schematic design is
prepared on the basis of which the developer prepares the final designs in consultation with the Chief
Architect. This has been so far applied to the design of cinema theatres in the City Centre and to petrol
stations.
Aditya Prakash, one of the architects who worked with Le Corbusier, observes: "It has always been realised
that Chandigarh must be well planned both in the private as well as in the public sector. From the very
beginning, all the commercial buildings of Chandigarh are under architectural control, but private housing by
and large had been left to its fate (of course, under the normal bye-laws and zoning) hoping that good taste
engendered by the government buildings will prevail and good architects will settle in Chandigarh and fulfil the
needs of private builders. [Now, many years later] Having introduced so many controls, the process is still
continuing. The existing controls are being refined or new controls introduced. In all these controls, whereas
restrictions are imposed on things which are generally unsightly, provision is always made to permit a good
architect to use his skill to provide the otherwise prohibited things on the exterior so that they enhance the
aesthetic appeal of the building or at any rate do not mar its beauty."
Functional distributions and placement of different activities within the city was based on human analogy so as
to enable the city to function as an organic entity. The industrial area was placed on the southeast to eliminate
entry of heavy traffic into the city. A 150 meters belt of trees thickly planted with trees provided an organic seal
around residential sectors to eliminate noise and industrial pollution
Along with the Periphery Control Act and the Tree Protection Act, the more obtrusive types of signboards and
advertisements were banned. These three measures were intended to check environmental and visual
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pollution and thereby protect the city's character and safeguard its quality of life.
After Le Corbusier
DEVELOPMENT PATTERN
Out of the Union Territory's 114 square kilometers, 75 square kilometers
constitute the Capital Project area. When Corbusier designed the project he
thought that the maximum population would be approximately five lakh. The
Capital Project was developed in three phases.
Sectors 1 to 30 were developed in the first phase; within this area one finds
the Secretariat, the High Court, the Assembly, the Postgraduate Institute of
Medical Education and Research, the Punjab University, offices of the
Chandigarh Administration, many colleges and schools, hospitals and
dispensaries, the city's main commercial area and many other smaller markets, residential neighborhoods,
playing fields and stadiums and large public gardens. The first phase was developed with a relatively small
population in mind. Residential plots in this phase are of various sizes -- the smallest is 250 square meters
while larger plots measure 8,000 square meters. In some sectors one finds
even larger plots.
Sectors 31 to 47 make up Phase II. While many important offices and
institutions, including the Chandigarh Medical College and hospital, have
been located in this sector, the complexion of this part of the city is
overwhelmingly residential. These sectors have a greater density of
population and many multi-storey apartment complexes catering to
different income groups. Most of these complexes have been constructed
by the Chandigarh Housing Board. No plot in Phase II measures more
than 1,000 square meters; the majority are 500 square meters.
Chandigarh's third phase is still on the drawing board. Planners are in favour of using these remaining sectors
exclusively for high-rise apartment complexes. So far, neither the Administration nor the Municipal Corporation
has sought to raise revenue in the form of property tax but as the demands on city infrastructure grow such a
step may have to be introduced. The city's requirement by way of water and electricity, maintenance of roads
and parks and other civic amenities grows with each passing year and providing all these things costs money.
Every city translates class stratification into geography. Le Corbusier recognised this and his plan shows how
he deliberately worked with it. The most desirable building sites were those on the northern edge of the city,
nearest the Capitol Complex and commanding the finest view of the mountains. It was here that the houses of
ministers and High Court judges were located and the largest private plots were laid out. Provision was made
occasionally in these areas for the inclusion of servant-class villages in order to enable these people to reside
near their employers. There was also some attempt to mix income levels in order to avoid too rigid a
stratification. By and large, however, the economic class of a neighborhood was determined by its distance
from the northern edge of the city, giving the city a hierarchic pattern and also compelling the poorest
government servant employees to travel the longest distance to work each day and that too with built-in eyestrain
since he has the sun in his eyes when he a travels northward to his office in the morning and he has the
sun in his eyes again when he travels southward to his home in the evening.
SQUATTER SETTLEMENTS & VILLAGES
As a city, Chandigarh has been a remarkable success story, providing a
high quality of life to its citizens and it has grown very rapidly. These two
factors have combined to attract not only middle and upper class families
but also workmen, skilled and unskilled, and petty tradesmen from more
economically depressed areas of the country. To them, Chandigarh
represents employment. Their labour has literally built the city and they
provide all manner of services to the more affluent citizens. Unfortunately,
with their tiny incomes, they have little option but to create their own
"housing" -- squatting on vacant lands and erecting makeshift shacks of
mud and thatch, using their ingenuity to get water and electricity.
Unfortunately, their self-reliance and inventiveness is outside the law and the insanitary and haphazard
conditions of their life are in stark contrast to the planned character of the city as well as
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detrimental to their own well-being.
Over the years, the Chandigarh Administration has been tackling the problem of squatter settlements. Since
1975, the chandigarh Housing Board has taken up schemes which have resettled 14,619 families. Low-cost
housing has been created for many thousands of people. Initially, the Chandigarh Housing Board constructed
resettlement colonies consisting of one-room tenements The most recent approach has been to mark out
plinth areas on developed land (in situ resettlement) and allow the people to create their own homes. The
Ambedkar Awas Yojana is also being implemented in Chandigarh. This scheme provides funds to the
Chandigarh Housing Board which constructs one-room dwellings and allots them to Scheduled Caste and
Backward Class persons. The Administration's plans are targeted at some 20,000 families living in huts.
The Administration's resettlement schemes have attracted criticism on the grounds that, by their liberality, they
have attracted squatters to the city. It is alleged that a man comes and builds his hut on the periphery of the
city because he knows there is a very good chance that the Administration will resettle him in better conditions
-- perhaps in a clean, dry, cement-roofed house with electricity and running water -- and then, if he is in dire
need of money, he can sell this better house, use the cash, build another hut and wait for the next
resettlement scheme. Against this, it is argued that such squatter population of persons who cannot afford to
own urban property (even , in some cases, if it is given to them) is inevitably a part of the urban population of
all major cities; that resettlement, including in situ resettlement, can improve the quality of urban life despite
the criticism made.
The last census of persons residing in squatter settlements was conducted in 1991. At that time 9.08 per cent
of the city's population lived in huts. (19,210 huts at that time and a total population of 96,050) The percentage
has probably grown much higher over the past six years. Professor Gopal Krishan, who conducted the survey
estimated that but for the Administration's rehabilitation schemes the percentage would have been about 18
per cent. Krishan projects a squatter population of nearly 13 per cent by the year 2000, rising to 17.25 per
cent in 2010 and 21.55 per cent by 2020. His projection may have been optimistic, and the squatter population
of Chandigarh may already by close to the national average of 21 per cent of urban population. The search for
a humane, and affordable and cheat-proof, solution to the problem of labour colonies grows more urgent.
Several villages were allowed to remain in the southern area of the city. As development of the sectors has
progressed, these villages have been engulfed by the city. The villages are exempted from architectural and
sanitation controls. The sectors are a ready market for milk with the result that the cattle population of these
villages has grown although the villages have no grazing land left, nor any space for keeping cowdung or
cattle-feed. Many of the original inhabitants have divided and redivided the compounds of their homes and
rented out to labourers. Population density in these villages is now extremely high, while water, electricity,
sanitation and other services for this population remain grossly inadequate. In some village areas one also
sees a boom in construction of commercial premises. In the absence of strict regulation, many of these new
buildings may be highly unsafe. In short, the "engulfed villages" constitute a problem -- or possibly an
opportunity to add traditional flavour to the rigid recipe of Le Corbusier's Chandigarh. One of the most
fashionable areas in Delhi is one such "engulfed village" -- preserved in all its traditional charm but made
clean and inviting to both shoppers and tourists. It has been suggested that a similar role might be found for
Chandigarh's villages though the issue is open to debate.
CHANGES IN LAND USE
Labourers are not the only people who put areas to unauthorised use. Many people residing in the sectors
have knocked down back walls and created small shops in a portion of their homes. Land use is informally
changed from residential to semi-commercial. This has its effect on services, quality of life, the city's economy
and land prices.
City planners know that as towns evolve there is a tendency for land use to change from predominantly
residential to predominantly commercial. In severe forms this is "inner city decay" with all its attendant ills of
congestion, neglect, high crime rate, falling property values and so on. Some planners suggest that
Chandigarh might permit mixed land use with strict conditions on parking and unauthorised construction
thereafter.
Even in purely residential neighborhoods, one may see an increase in population density as the grandchildren
and great grandchildren of original occupants demand space for their families on the same property. At
present the law prohibits sub-division of plots but families may find a way to get around this. They may rebuild
or remodel existing homes so as to create flats, thereby increasing population density.
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In sectors where population density is already high, the tendency is to make use of every square centimeter of
built up space. Balconies are glazed in; additional rooms are added on terraces and verandahs, in garage
space and even on public land next to the house or flat.
INFORMAL MARKETS
The city has seen the mushroom growth of not only squatter settlements
but also informal markets. In many sectors, open spaces near the market
area have been illegally occupied and converted into congeries of tin and
canvas-roofed shacks where petty traders sell all manner of goods. These
are locally known as rehri markets. (A rehri is a platform roughly 0.6 by 0.9
meters mounted on four bicycle wheels. Small traders load their wares onto
these simple "mobile shops" and push them through the residential areas
selling door to door. Originally, the rehri markets were places where these
itinerant vendors would congregate in the evenings but over course of time,
they became established at particular spots.) From the late 1980s, after several fires broke out in the
makeshift markets, the Administration has been constructing brick markets divided into very small booths and
provided with electricity and water and built to ensure safety standards. The petty traders whose shops were
burned down have been rehabilitated in these improved markets.
The recently introduced practice of the "day-market" -- haat in Hindi -- represents another attempt to reconcile
the interests of consumers and very small traders with the bylaws of the Administration. Small traders are
being permitted to offer their wares at designated spots which are "open for business" once a week. Monday
may see a day-market functioning in Sector 38, Tuesday may be the turn of Sector 46 and so on. At the end
of the day, the traders are obliged to clean the area they occupied and leave.
Another type of informal market, which began in Chandigarh and has since been adopted in many cities, is the
Apni Mandi. Farmers are allowed to sell their produce directly to the consumers; they set out their fruits and
vegetables at designated spots which, like the day-markets, are open for business once a week, with the
market shifting from site to site in rotation. As the consumers are buying directly from the producers, prices
are substantially lower.
BEYOND CHANDIGARH
The success of Chandigarh has had its effect on the growth of towns and settlements in the immediate
vicinity. Although the original plan prohibited construction activity within 10 kilometres of the city limits, the
state governments of Punjab and Haryana have created satellite townships within this prohibited zone, a large
Army cantonment has been set up at Chandimandir and the Union Territory Administration has also
developed Manimajra, a village just beyond the Capitol Project area, as a modern residential complex.
To the south of the city, the Government of Punjab created Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar "S.A.S Nagar" --
informally known by its old name, Mohali. This town has a population (1991 Census) of approximately 78,000
and a decadal growth rate of 140 per cent. To the east of the city lies Haryana's newly created town of
Panchkula. The planners envisage a population of 3.5 lakh and it too is growing very fast. The Army
cantonment adds several thousand more people to the Greater Chandigarh area.
But these planned townships are not the end of the story. A number of small towns existed in the area long
before anyone ever heard the name of Chandigarh. Among these one counts Kharar, Kurali, Derabassi,
Barotiwala, Baddi, Naraingarh, Pinjore and Parwanoo. Land is much less expensive in these towns but since
they are within easy commuting distance of Chandigarh, they too are experiencing growth. In particular, they
have attracted entrepreneurs, resulting in an ever-deepening ring of industries all around the city. Looking into
the future, it seems likely that by 2020, a ring of industrial townships extending up to 30 kilometers from the
Capital Project Area will surround Chandigarh. Already, in 1997, industrial growth along the main roads
leading into the city has been phenomenal. National Highway Number 1 linking Chandigarh and Ambala is
lined with units; similarly, thousands of units, including some very large ones, have set up along the road
leading to the Punjab town of Ropar and even beyond it. The road connecting Chandigarh and Shimla is not
lacking in industries and added to these units one also sees many hotels, large and small, catering to the
tourist traffic.
Construction activity in small towns and the creation of industrial estates and housing colonies adds up to a
substantial construction boom. It has been going on for several years now and will continue for perhaps
another 20 years. Where there is construction, there is labour and that brings us again to the problem of
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squatters and attempts to save the city from slums and all their attendant problems. Area within the Capital
Project will soon be entirely built up. This will push labourers toward the periphery of the Union Territory ---
into and around the villages. One can expect the in-coming labourer to be as sensitive to the benefits of life in
Chandigarh as anyone else. If possible, they will prefer to settle as close to the city as possible, rather than be
diverted into Punjab and Haryana (although they would probably be working in those states). The situation
poses a very great challenge to the Chandigarh Administration. The Union Territory has no Article 370, which
restricts domicile in the UT only to those settled there before some arbitrary cut-off year. How does one
prevent the growth of slums without being a ruthless destroyer of the simple hearths of the poor? Complicating
this situation even further is the bald fact that one man's slum is another man's vote-bank.
But even if the inflow is basically comprised of middle class and well to do persons, the city will still have some
adjusting to do. Within the Capital Project area, less and less land is available with each passing year, and the
price of this land soars ever higher. Naturally the agricultural land of villages adjoining Chandigarh will attract
housing colony developers.
Although constructing residences or shops on agricultural land outside the village boundaries is strictly
forbidden, the temptation has been great enough to persuade many people to risk demolition and build
anyway. From time to time, buildings are pulled down, but as "land-hunger" grows, increasing pressures are
mounted to amend the Periphery Act. Some argue that it would be better for the government itself to develop
the surrounding areas in the periphery as that would at least allow it some control over the layout and
construction norms. Otherwise, they say, people willing to take the risk, will construct anyway following any
pattern of construction they please. After some time the Administration will be forced to recognise a fait
accompli but this "fait" will be a chaotic one.
Pressure on Chandigarh would have been much greater had Panchkula and SAS Nagar not been created.
Chandigarh would have experienced greater densification; unnecessary commercialisation and growth of
wholesale markets had these townships not been available as "escape valves". A problem arises however, in
view of the fact that these towns are under different state governments and Chandigarh is under a third
administration: achieving coordination is not easy. Planners wish for a coordinated formal policy that will cover
development norms, environmental concerns and slum rehabilitation. Absence of uniform policies on matters
concerning the Greater Chandigarh area encourages detrimental trends in many fields.
Easy access to Delhi is already affecting life in Chandigarh and is likely to become an even more significant
factor in the next few years. It is possible to board a comfortable train and be in the nation's capital in less
than four hours. As even more high-speed trains are introduced in coming years, that time may be cut to 90
minutes. As the quality of life in congested and polluted Delhi grows worse, it is inevitable that those with
means will prefer to live in Chandigarh and commute to the capital to work. Chandigarh may become to Delhi
what Forest Lawn is to New York. Looking ahead, it seems possible that Chandigarh, with its ample facilities
for a good life, will increasingly become a city for the well-to-do.
It is reasonable to expect that the presence of a large pool of skilled workers in the city along with numerous
institutions turning where engineers, doctors, scientific researchers, lawyers, accountants and computer
specialists will attract certain kinds of industry to the city in the years to come. If the trend is toward location in
the town itself, it might lead to relatively clean industry but if the trend is toward the villages and peripheral
areas, then growth may repeat the Delhi pattern -- potentially hazardous and polluting units rapidly coming up
with no sort of planning to regulate them.
Views of Eminent Architect
CHARLES CORREA
Oh Chandigarh. Brave new Chandigarh. Born in the harsh plains of the Punjab without umbilical cord.... The
1950s were indeed a heroic time. India had just won independence and, with Nehru as prime minister, was all
set to invent the future. Into a mosaic of development strategies for village panchayats and handloom
cooperatives, atomic energy and steel plants, came Chandigarh.
It proved to be a catalyst of staggering effectiveness. All at once, India was catapulted to centre state on the
world architectural scene. Overnight the things we could possibly build in our climate and within the
constraints of our economy (i.e. paper-thin Miesian glass boxes) were out. What was in was exactly what we
could do best: in situ concrete, handcrafted form-work, an architecture of hot, vivid colour, deep shadow and
tropical sun. The direction of architecture throughout the world swung around abruptly, following Le Corbusier.
In bitterly cold, sunless high-tech societies, people went to enormous expense to produce one-off
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concrete buildings, complete with sun-breakers. But what was an expensive affectation for them appeared
rational and economical in the context of our own lives. Here Le Corbusier seemed to raise the most
impassioned issues. His buildings were great gestures, evocative of our past: not the Hollywood image that
permeated Edward Stone's Delhi embassy like a cheap perfume but a truer India, an India of the bazaars --
sprawling, cruel, raucous, with a dimension all its own.
In part it was the extraordinary decibel level at which Le Corbusier's buildings came at you. Compared with
the bland, sotto voce tone of most 1950s architecture, this had the brutal, primordial (yet elegant, urbane!)
thunder of Stravinsky in the concert hall. Thus the ramp of the Ahmedabad Mill-owners' Building, stretching
out like a great hand to pick pedestrians up off the road; the (unbuilt) governor's residence in Chandigarh with
its incredible silhouette ("I am a Governor's Palace!"); and the Sarabhai house in Ahmedabad, using barrel
vaults similar to those in the Jaoul houses in Paris and yet so totally different in expression -- a masterwork as
complex, as amorphous, and as open-ended as a banyan tree, as an Indian joint family, as India herself.
It seemed that on every visit to Chandigarh (which was an annual pilgrimage for many of us in those days)
one learned something new. Each time, the old magician had a new rabbit to pull out of his hat. Just when one
was certain that structural integrity was crucial and that the plan was "the generator", he produced the High
Court: one great crazy, spaced-out entrance, and to hell with everything else (i.e. courtrooms broiling in the
sun, lawyers' chambers in the basement and so forth). Or the Secretariat: a monumental façade that was its
own justification, the ramp on the roof acting as an immense backbone, holding the marvelously long,
fractured, ungainly heap together. The building as façade: a thesis straight out of the Beaux-Arts, one that
seemingly turned the fundamental tenets of the Modern Movement upside down.
Needless to say, the effect was electrifying -- and the arguments were endless. But, as Nehru would often
say, "It doesn't really matter whether you like Chandigarh or whether you don't like it. The fact of the matter is
simply this: it has changed your lives." He was right.
Because of Le Corbusier and because of the questions that arose from his work, a spine of architecturally
conscious communities sprang up in the north and west of the country, from the Punjab all the way across to
Delhi and down to Ahmedabad, Baroda and Bombay. Today, much of the Chandigarh vocabulary has become
standard vernacular for public works departments all over this subcontinent, and a number of private practices
-- including my own -- have probably survived only because of the interest in architecture triggered by that city.
India was indeed lucky to get Le Corbusier -- and we knew it.
Thus far, the good news. Now for some of the bad. Over the past two decades, it has become evident that
many of Le Corbusier's ideas don't work. For instance sun-breakers: they are really great dust-catching,
pigeon-infested contrivances, which gather heat all day and then radiate it back into the building at night,
causing indescribable anguish to the occupants. They are not nearly as useful as old-fashioned verandahs,
which are far cheaper to build, protect the building during the day, cool off quickly in the evenings and
furthermore, double as circulation systems. Neither have the great parasol roofs (as in the High Court) proved
much more useful. Was Le Corbusier perhaps more concerned with the visual expression of climate control
than with its actual effectiveness? In any event, his enthusiasm seemed to lie not in solving the problem but in
making the theatrical gesture -- assuming the heroic pose -- of addressing it. One recalls Steen Eiler
Rasmussen, who likened Le Corbusier and his buildings to a child playing with chairs and boxes. The child
sets these up in a certain way and then cries out gleefully, 'Look at my motor car!' You say, 'How can that be a
motor car? Does it move?' But the child cannot understand. To him it is a motor car.
And there seems to be a curious lack of concern for the actual users. This leads to a lot of inadequate
planning and much gross detailing. For instance, throughout the office halls of the Secretariat there are files
piled high on clerical desks. You can blame the clerks, but surely it was the architect's responsibility to
analyse the programme and identify the area (at least 30 per cent in any government office!) needed for filing.
Or take the cafeteria on the roof: it has an exposed concrete counter from which even an animal would refuse
to eat. So the food is kept on the floor! When you think of the chaos and disorder of much of India, you realise
that Le Corbusier's buildings were really beamed at us aesthetes. To the average government employee, it's
just more of the same. Oh, for a single building by, say SOM! It would have raised a lot of irrelevant questions,
but perhaps also some of the right ones.
Then again, however fine the perceptions of Le Corbusier about the visual world, his Chandigarh buildings
were never really concerned with the Indian psyche. After all, he was a Mediterranean man, and the Capitol
buildings were part of that astonishing series of consecutive steps that make up his oeuvre complete. Thus,
both as an architect and as a person, Le Corbusier remained one whose deepest instincts were intensely
European. Take, for example, the High Court in Chandigarh with its great entrance recalling, among other
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things, the fantastic Buland Darwaza at the entrance to Fatehpur Sikri. With these monumental, superscaled
spaces and volumes, le Corbusier (perhaps unconsciously) projects an ambiance conducive not to any Indian
sense of justice but to the Napoleonic code: that is, justice that is suprahuman, justice that is blind, justice that
is beyond the individual. Compare this with the decisions that the Emperor Akbar might have reached atop the
pillar in the centre of his Diwan-e-Am (also in Fatehpur Sikr) a small masterpiece, exquisitely scaled to human
dimensions. I am not saying that the justice of Akbar was preferable, only that it, like the code of Manu and the
wisdom of Solomon, sprang from a completely different set of instincts and mode of understanding, and that
architecture unconsciously and at a deep level, reflects these difference.
When we put aside the buildings of Chandigarh and examine its planning, the questions become even more
evident. Perhaps, as Sibyl Moholy-Nagy used to say, Le Corbusier was never really interested in urbanism.
He only tuned to it when he couldn't get enough commissions as an architect. Certainly Chandigarh, as a town
plan, never was the brave new world that Nehru presumed it to be. (Far from being a futuristic city, it isn't even
a contemporary one; it is positively feudal in its ironclad separation of rulers and ruled, in the caste-ridden
pattern of its sectors, and so forth. Most perplexing of all is its antic hierarchy of roadways, with V-1s and V-2s
intersecting along a grid every half mile or so. By 1950, anyone who had ever driven a car knew that wouldn't
make for speedy traffic. (But perhaps in Paris Le Corbusier took taxis?)
Even more serious was the low density of building adopted for the city, especially those sectors where the
richer people stay. Far from the kind of carpet housing so prevalent in Le Corbusier's beloved Greek islands
(and all over the villages and towns of India), Chandigarh exhibits the meaninglessly large plots found in the
military cantonments of the British Raj. These criminally low densities involve large per capita subsidies that
get progressively higher as a person rises in government! Worst of all, they make a viable public transport
system a near impossibility, so that in the middle of a scorchingly hot afternoon you will see hapless Indians
plodding along on foot or bicycle down mercilessly long straight roads, between brick walls to infinity.
But the 1950s must have been a very naïve time, and many of our planners took Chandigarh to be a portent
of the future, with the result that scores of new towns were built in its likeness. (One of them, Bhilai, houses
the biggest steel complex in India, built with Russian collaboration. When Khrushchev visited the town he
asked to see the chief planner. An Indian stepped forward proudly. 'In the USSR,' Krushchev said pleasantly,
'we would take you out and shoot you.') Like their prototype, all these new towns assume a middle class
pattern of living totally unrelated to the actual income profile of the population; thus many of the sectors in
Chandigarh have two or three families crowding into single dwelling units, and thousands of desperate
squatters have eked out miserable crevices for themselves all over the city.
For India is a poor country, and the human condition is brutal for more than half the inhabitants in our
spaceship Earth. These facts are palpable today; perhaps they were not so vivid 25 years ago. Or perhaps, as
was suggested earlier, Le Corbusier was not really a planner at all, but an architect manqué. When he was
given the twin assignment of planning the city and designing the Capitol Complex, he seems to have spent
minimal time on the former, modifying, only marginally, the plan prepared by Albert Mayer; the Capitol
Complex, on the other hand, demanded and obtained his most complete attention. He forthwith decoupled the
four buildings of the Capitol Complex from the city and placed them against the foothills of the Himalaya, thus
setting himself an intriguing architectural exercise, perhaps the most exquisite architectural exercise of all, one
that took him back to his student voyages to Greece and to the Acropolis of Athens.
The imbalance between the quality of effort brought to bear on the Capitol Complex and that on the town plan
as a whole was obviously Le Corbusier's own decision, taken by him unilaterally. And this brings us to a
crucial aspect of his influence, one that even now, 25 years later, is difficult to judge; it concerns the role of the
architect in society and his responsibility to the client. This is a question of fundamental importance in India
and, by extension, in most of the developing world as well.
Now, Le Corbusier always brought to bear the very highest intensity on his task as a designer. Despite certain
ambiguities in his writing (for instance, in The City of Tomorrow, in which he seems to be signaling his
availability to large-scale developers and "the captains of industry"!), he was never one to compromise his
design objective; never in that sense was he a gun for hire. For us in India in the mid-1950s, that itself was a
revelation. For, with one or two exceptions, the majority of architects we knew went about their business with
the most mundane objectives. Le Corbusier changed all that. He gave us a sense of the dimensions of history
and the kind of task -- and standards -- an architect could set himself. There is no lesson in architecture more
important than that.
Yet, it is precisely this search for excellence that can become a two-edged sword for it implies that you act
alone, independent of -- and often despite -- you client (not to mention the rest of society). The resultant
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uilding is, at best, a sort of "mad jeweler's act"; more often than not, it degenerates into a pointless ego trip.
In any event, however well (or badly) done, it always involves essentially the same equation, one in which the
client is dazzled, threatened -- in brief, conned -- into doing it your way. The adversary/confrontation syndrome
was something Le Corbusier sought out, fostered, revelled in; reinforced what Charles Jencks calls his tragic
view of architecture.
Yet, it is an architect-client relationship fundamentally different from that which produced the masterpieces of
the past, from the Katsura Palace in Tokyo to the great cathedral at Chartres. Golconda is exquisite, but its
architect surely didn't make any unilateral decisions against the wishes of the emperor. You'd get your head
chopped off. No the reason why Golconda is so exquisite is precisely because the architect wasn't trying to
'con' the emperor into anything. He didn't have to. They both shared the same aesthetic. They were both on
the same side of the table.
Thus there were enormous advantages to the traditional Indian relationship of architect and client. It was an
arrangement that, as recently as 150 years ago, could produce a masterpiece as magnificent as the desert
town of Jaiselmer. This traditional relationship was deeply eroded by British influence during the Victorian era,
but in any event, any possibility of it regenerating took a great leap backward when Le Corbusier appeared on
the scene. In the hearts and minds of architects throughout the country he embodied the prototype ("I am the
prima donna; I sing alone!") for many decades to come.
But hindsight is always unfair and 25 years is a long time. In fact, almost none of these issues had arisen in
the 1950s. There were a number of laymen (philistines!) who didn't like Chandigarh but simply because they
thought it 'too modern', not because they eschewed the social and economic attitudes it implied. We were all
too naïve and innocent to see the writing on the wall. Yet, in 10 short years, all that had gone. By 1965, when
Louis Kahn started building his new capital in Dhaka, the issues had surfaced.
Poor Kahn! His monumental brick boxes with their pop-out circles appeared much too late; willful mannerisms
in an ocean of desperate poverty. In the 1950s life was different; you went to Chandigarh and saw buildings
that were a great exaggeration of concrete, and you came back to your own office and wanted to use nothing
but concrete on all projects as well! In the 1970s you visit Kahn's Management Institute in Ahmedabad and
see monuments that are a great exaggeration of brick, and you never want to see another brick again; they
keep pouring out of your ears.
Obviously, the difference is not just one of time scale, it is also visual. Kahn (who in his research laboratories
in Philadelphia created one of the great icons of the 20th century) failed in Ahmedabad and Dhaka -- for me at
least -- on the level of poetic invention. This is a shortcoming of which Le Corbusier can never be suspect.
Even today, almost three decades later, his buildings are stunningly beautiful. Thousands of imitators haven't
managed to devalue their impact. ("The artist goes ahead in a private car," wrote Cocteau, "the public follows
in a bus.")
The anticipation starts as one approaches Chandigarh. One drives through the town, pat the houses spread
out in the dust, endless rows of foolish confidence tricks. Then, suddenly in the distance, like an aircraft carrier
floating above the flotsam and jetsam of some harbour town, there appears the Secretariat. From miles away
one sees it, white in the sunlight, racing along with the car, riding high above the rows of houses that make up
the foreground. Gradually this proscenium clears, the other two actors -- the Assembly and the High Court --
in the melodrama appear, and all three ride together against the grey-blue foothills of the Himalaya. Ride
together, swinging sometimes behind enormous banks of earth. One approaches closer and closer, and the
bleached whiteness deepens slowly into the grey-green of concrete, the simple outlines of the masses
dissolve into an astonishing, voluptuous complexity of shadow and substance.
"I have seen the future -- and it works!" cried Lincoln Steffens, the American author in 1922, on his return from
the USSR. A statement so optimistic, so naïve, so poignant as to be almost incomprehensible to us in the
1980s. Today, architects and planners are an extremely cautious tribe; our heads bloody and very much
bowed. Hence much of Post-Modernism says: "We have seen the past, and it appears to have worked ...
maybe."
This is indeed ironic. For it is countries like India, that live with the past all around and accept it as easily as a
woman drapes a sari, that are the most impatient to invent the future. They see the past everyday, and much
of it doesn't work, any of the time. Thus we have Mao Tse-tung, with a kind of divine impatience, restructuring
China through his concept of communes. And we have the great manifestoes of the 1920s. And we have
Chandigarh.
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What is amiss: these ventures or our own lives? I remember being caught in New York in 1962 during the
Cuban missile crisis. All over the city there was mounting alarm about possible nuclear attack, endless talk of
air raids, and so forth. After three harrowing days, my wife and I decided to return to Boston. The highway was
crowded with cars, jamming all the cloverleaf intersections. I was wretched. I thought to myself: Damn Sant'
Elia and all those Futurists! Couldn't they see that their visions wouldn't work? We were listening to the car
radio when suddenly we heard the announcement: the Russian ships had turned back! All at once we realised
that America and Russia were not going to fight after all, that this marked a turning point in the cold war, that
there would probably be world peace for a decade or more. It was an enchanted moment. I looked out the
window at the beautiful highway intersections and the myriad cars arching gracefully through the night, red
taillights aglow. Our misery, dear Brutus, lies not in our buildings, but in ourselves.
We have been diminished because our perceptions have become small. We can never be bigger than the
questions we define. What made the architects of the 20th century exceptional was not so much their talent as
the import of the issues they tackled. For, as Stendahl wrote about Napoleon, "There are no great men, there
are only great events." The attitudes and values of the 1920s, which Peter Smithson calls the "Heroic Age of
Architecture", had receded: with Chandigarh they burst forth again, like an Indian summer.
The venture remains unique in our minds, not only for what it accomplished but also for what it conceived of
doing. This is what generated the enthusiasm and the dedication of the team around Le Corbusier. To them,
the building of the city was the central fact of their lives. They gave the task everything they had. Le Corbusier
demanded no less. Architecture was for him a deeply moral act, and to us in India this was comprehensible;
he was right. Certainly without such a commitment even architects of enormous talent can be vitiated, as
witness the buildings that are going up In the Gulf today. Ironically enough, it is the poor countries of the
world, like India and Bangladesh, that go to Le Corbusier and Kahn for their buildings. Rightly or wrongly, they
believe that architecture is a passionate, nearly sacred, undertaking. I sometimes wonder what would have
happened to Le Corbusier if he had landed a commission in the Gulf! Would he have accepted? (Remember
The City of Tomorrow). And would he have survived?
India was lucky to get Le Corbusier; Le Corbusier too, was lucky to get India.
When all is said and done, 25 years is not such a long period; it is a mere eyeblink in history. Over the
decades to come, new issues will arise and Chandigarh will have to measure up to them. Perhaps the future
will be even harsher than we have been on Le Corbusier's abilities and insights as a city planner. But to the
incredible power of his architecture, Chandigarh will always bear steadfast and unique testament. His was the
kind of commitment Hinduism has always respected and understood.
India, in its turn, brought out the best in Le Corbusier. It was as though the warm sunlight and the lifeaccepting
patterns of the people loosened up the Swiss in him. As in his earlier visit to Brazil, he changed. His
buildings grew more exuberant, more tropical, which is to say they became more pluralistic, less rigidly
predetermined. Old temples and cities in India (like their counterparts elsewhere) are a collection of a good
many decisions -- some transparently rational, others opaque -- that makes them as equivocal, as
unfathomable, as music that you want to hear again and again. Thus, perhaps, the Vedic saying, "An architect
should not finish his buildings; he should know how to leave 40 per cent to God."
India is an ancient land. Over the centuries there have been other new cities like Chandigarh and other
prophets like Le Corbusier: Fatehpur Sikri, Patrick Geddes, Edwin Lutyens, Golconda, Mandu. Today many of
them are not perceived at all as foreign elements but as an integral part of the Indian landscape. Yet when, for
instance, Fatehpur Sikri was first built, it must have seemed outlandish and something landed from the moon.
Today we see it as a very Indian city. For this timeless civilisation has never fretted over labels like old and
new, indigenous and foreign; it establishes affinities far more fundamental than that. And Hinduism has
developed a truly amazing pluralistic schema where new and old, light and dark can co-exist, be absorbed,
endure...
India as blotting paper. Who knows? A hundred years from now, perhaps Chandigarh will also fit seamlessly
into the Punjabi ethos; perhaps it will be perceived as a famous old Indian town, and Le Corbusier will be
acknowledged ... as the greatest Indian architect of them all?
["Chandigarh: the view from Benares", reprinted with permission from the author ]
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