Chandigarh Ahmedabad – Le Corbusier - Vereniging van ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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 23 / 27
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 24 / 27
Page 1 and 2: de stad Chandigarh informatie Chand
Page 3 and 4: 6 Sex Ratio (no. of females per 100
Page 5 and 6: Historical Background GENESIS OF TH
Page 7 and 8: that segregated land use in the mas
Page 9 and 10: sought to make every place in the c
Page 11 and 12: (c) The resulting geography: Concen
Page 13 and 14: The Assembly Close to the huge sunk
Page 15 and 16: a grid system of beams and columns.
Page 17 and 18: multiplication of levels in the sta
Page 19 and 20: etained in the city's green belts.
Page 21 and 22: pollution and thereby protect the c
Page 23: In sectors where population density
Page 27 and 28: uilding is, at best, a sort of "mad

Chandigarh Ahmedabad – Le Corbusier - Vereniging van ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?