Chandigarh: India's city of the future

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After the trauma of Partition in 1947, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru persuaded the maverick Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier, to build a new capital city for the province of Punjab. He hoped the project would symbolise a newly-independent, forward-looking India. Le Corbusier had revolutionised architecture and urban planning in the first half of the twentieth century. He was loved and hated in equal measure for his modernist approach, favouring flat roofs, glass walls and concrete. In 2016, Claire Bowes spoke to Sumit Kaur, former Chief Architect and lifelong resident of Chandigarh, about the legacy left by Le Corbusier.

(Photo: The Chandigarh Legislative Assembly building. 1999. Credit: John Macdougall/AFP)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC
0:35.4	Sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the podcast of Witness History from the BBC World Service with me Claire Bowes.
0:49.0	This week we're looking at the stories behind architecture from around the world.
0:55.0	After Indian independence 75 years ago this year,
0:59.0	one of the world's most famous architects agreed to design a whole new city for the country.
1:05.0	Chandigar was to be a city of the future and the modernist architect
1:10.0	La Corbusier was to design it. I am a visual man, a man working with eyes and hands.
1:21.0	My research is directed towards what is the principal value in the life, the poetry.
1:30.0	Le Corbusier was a Swiss French architect and Urban Planner.
1:35.0	In the first half of the 20th century, he pioneered a modernist approach to architecture,
1:41.0	rejecting elaborate decoration and embracing function.
1:45.0	Typically his houses had a geometrical frame,
1:48.0	flat roofs, smooth surfaces and glass walls.
1:52.0	My cities are green cities.
1:55.0	My houses give sun, space and green.
1:58.0	He famously wrote that a house was a machine for living in
2:02.0	and believed that with better planning both houses
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.