Corbusier's Chandigarh, northern India - has anyone been?

[brix]

I recently went to the Corbusier exhibition at the Barbican where I learned about Chandigarh, a city that he designed and built in northern India. I can't believe I'd never heard of it before. It looks amazing, and from The Guardian piece below, it sounds like it's aged well:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/jan/28/architecture.india

Has anyone been? Can anyone tell me any more?

 

[Voley]

It hasn't aged well at all, I'm afraid.

A lot of the buildings are unbearably hot (a design fault, apparently) and whenever I've passed through it just looks like another dirty, chaotic Indian city. Only with angles.

Sorry if that's not you wanted to hear but I can think of a million better things to spend money on in India before flashy architecture.

 

[Voley]

Aslo I really wouldn't want to live in a place called 'Sector 26'. it sounds like something out of Orwell.

 

[brix]

It hasn't aged well at all, I'm afraid.

A lot of the buildings are unbearably hot (a design fault, apparently) and whenever I've passed through it just looks like another dirty, chaotic Indian city. Only with angles.

Sorry if that's not you wanted to hear but I can think of a million better things to spend money on in India before flashy architecture.

Thanks for that.

 

[Voley]

It's my honest opinion. I'd sooner have clean, drinkable water than nice architecture.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

A avant-garde Indian city designed by a French architect in the 50s, now chaotic and falling apart. Sounds like the setting for a Ballard novel.

 

[Supine]

As a city it's nothing special. The Corbusier city design, with lots of open spaces, fails as the space is taken by people living in it. Which kind of spoils the whole design concept.

The one reason why the place is unmissable though is Nek Chands gardens. One of the most amazing gardens in the world imho. Google image search "chandigarh garden" for examples of his work.

 

[pogofish]

I can't believe I'd never heard of it before.

I can't believe it either - To have the slightest interest in Corbusier & not know about this place is very surprising. From what I've read about the place over the years, some aspects of it seem to have worked, others not. It is also not helped by the city rapidly expanding to double its intended size.

Another face of Chandigarh is the Rock Garden - Built originally in secret by a roads inspector out of waste he picked-up on his rounds.

http://www.clt.astate.edu/elind/nc_picsp1.htm

It was eventually found & opened as a public park in the 70s:

 

[pogofish]

Sorry if that's not you wanted to hear but I can think of a million better things to spend money on in India before flashy architecture.

Remember that it was the Indian government who comissioned this city - Partly as a statement of their post-colonial independance & undoubtedly partly to give a new identity to the post-Raj/Partition Punjab - A state which had previously had strong & potentially troublesome sovereign identity of its own.

 

[pogofish]

A avant-garde Indian city designed by a French architect in the 50s, now chaotic and falling apart. Sounds like the setting for a Ballard novel.

Strictly, Corbusier was only a secondary architect on the project - The original planning having been done by an American firm who pulled-out after the death of a senior partner. Which may have accounted for some of its failings? CIAM/European & US modernist planning ideas differed quite markedly in that period.

Most of the built environment also dates from after Corbusier's involvement ceased in the mid-late 50s.

 

[lang rabbie]

I don't know what the truth is in this, but it would explain a lot about the utterly vast distances between the Capitol buildings...

Georges Maurios, who was one of the young French architects in the design team, explained that an assistant had confused the Place de la Concorde and the Etoile in a specially drawn scale used by Corb to determine the distances between the buildings of the Capitol, the governmental area north of the main gridded structure of the new city. The result of the mis-measure is a vast and dusty plain which dwarfs individuals

.

 

[quimcunx]

A avant-garde Indian city designed by a French architect in the 50s, now chaotic and falling apart. Sounds like the setting for a Ballard novel.

''Later, as I sat on the balcony, eating the dog.''


I went to the Corbusier exhibition last Monday. I thought it was rubbish, mostly.

 

[teuchter]

I went to the Corb exhibition today. I have been thinking of starting a Corbusier crap/not crap thread, which I may well do in the next day or two if I have the time.

I've never been to Chandigarh but if I ever go to India I will certainly want to go there. I know the complex well through drawings and photographs, but would of course be interested to see what it's like in the flesh, and also how it is actually used in reality, which I guess is inevitably not going to match up entirely with what Mr C envisaged.

From a purely sculptural point of view (and, of course, looking good as sculpture is not the only measure against which architecture should be judged) the Chandigarh buildings are possibly my favourites of Corbusier's, and some of my favourite buildings of all time. At the same time I can understand why their appeal is not exactly universal.

Here is one of my favourite bits which is in fact just a sculpture: the "open hand" monument:

I have also heard the anecdote posted by Lang Rabbie above about a misinterpretation of the drawings resulting in the oversized spaces in between the buildings.

By the way I think Corbusier was technically Swiss, although he did spend most of his life based in France.

Interesting, perhaps, to compare Chandigarh with Edwin Lutyens' work in New Dehli, for the British colonial administration, a few decades earlier, and to contemplate to what extent the architecture represents the very different political contexts of each project.

Brix, if you ever go to Chandigarh make sure you post about it here!

 

[teuchter]

Another project with certain similarities to Chandigarh:

Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban

The National Assembly Building of Bangladesh, designed by European/American architect Louis Kahn in the 1960s.

 

[Voley]

Darjeeling's worth a mention if we're talking about Lutyens and colonial Raj-era stuff. Although it doesn't have anything as grand as Delhi or Chhetrapati Shivaji in Bombay, it does have an amazing Mall that could be in Tunbridge Wells. Well, it could be if it wasn't for the world's third highest mountain dominating the horizon. Beautiful place with very incongruous but intriguing architecture.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Not been to Darjeeling, but went to Mussoorie which is meant to be similar. I remember that we all felt that it was a bit like being in Rhyl or somewhere, some quaint but crumbling old victorian seaside resort, with as you say breathtaking mountains in the backgrop.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Chandigarh appeared a ridiculous place to me. I went through it on the bus on the way back to delhi from the mountains. It was like milton keynes, all these endless long straight roads and traffic roundabouts, and barely anyone had cars then.

 

[Voley]

Not been to Darjeeling, but went to Mussoorie which is meant to be similar. I remember that we all felt that it was a bit like being in Rhyl or somewhere, some quaint but crumbling old victorian seaside resort, with as you say breathtaking mountains in the backgrop.

They're a bit of a monument to how daft the British were, the hill-stations, but I still like them. There's something about an old-fashioned hotel (just like one from a seaside town, you're right) smack bang in the middle of chaotic India that appeals somehow. Only one I didn't like much was Shimla, although the toy-train ride down to 'India Proper' was really great.

 

[lang rabbie]

Interesting, perhaps, to compare Chandigarh with Edwin Lutyens' work in New Dehli, for the British colonial administration, a few decades earlier, and to contemplate to what extent the architecture represents the very different political contexts of each project.

The show now at the Barbican opened last year in the Lutyens designed crypt of Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral (part of capital of kulcha) and I missed it by being there a week too early!

Unfortunately, viewers were denied the opportunity for Lutyens v Corbu head to head .

To Liverpool for the architectural event of the autumn - the collision between Lutyens and Le Corbusier in the Metropolitan Cathedral Crypt. Unfortunately the overbearing and labyrinthine staging of the exhibition makes what might have been an interesting combat between these two titans difficult to discern. The spatial and material genius of Lutyens is cleverly obscured to enhance the importance of the most famous bespectacled Swiss, although an interesting family of geometrically abstract holy water stoups peak provocatively around planar screens, presenting a cunningly utilitarian riposte to Le Corbusier’s ’sculptures’.

 

[Sunray]

They're a bit of a monument to how daft the British were, the hill-stations, but I still like them. There's something about an old-fashioned hotel (just like one from a seaside town, you're right) smack bang in the middle of chaotic India that appeals somehow. Only one I didn't like much was Shimla, although the toy-train ride down to 'India Proper' was really great.

Got the best hotel for quaint though. Proper old school YMCA. You can do sports and stuff there and everything.

Probably the only place I stayed in that didn't have bars on the window.

Huge windows as well.

I stayed in Chandigarh by accident, the train I was waiting for was moved to another platform and they only announced it in Hindi. So ended up there.

Its an total anachronism, India does not do clean lines. Its not part of their thinking in general. The fact that its there is what makes India an incredible country to visit.

The rock garden is well work a look. Incredible.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

That's a great picture sunray

 

[Voley]

Yes, very nice view.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

A lot of the buildings are unbearably hot (a design fault, apparently) and whenever I've passed through it just looks like another dirty, chaotic Indian city. Only with angles.

Le Corbusier strikes again! What a legacy...

 

[Divisive Cotton]

'

I went to the Corbusier exhibition last Monday. I thought it was rubbish, mostly.

A reflection of the architecture

 

[HackneyE9]

What a dream ticket that could be! - Chandrigarh and Dacca, all in one.

On our honeymoon, MrsHackneyE9 paid a similar architectural pilgrimmage to a modernist capital built from scratch: Niemeyer's Brasilia.

Absolutely mind-blowing.

 

[quimcunx]

You can go to Canberra for your anniversary.

 

[teuchter]

A reflection of the architecture

It would be good if you could expand on this a little.

 

[HackneyE9]

You can go to Canberra for your anniversary.

 

[lang rabbie]

Its an total anachronism, India does not do clean lines. Its not part of their thinking in general.

Well not since the decline of the Visnayagar empire, perhaps

 

[Orang Utan]

Anyone been to Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban in Bangladesh?