Chandigarh Ahmedabad – Le Corbusier - Vereniging van ...

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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