Le Corbusier and Chandigarh

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Shortly after Indian independence Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru persuaded the maverick Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier, to help reinvent a newly independent India by building a new capital city for the province of Punjab.

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.

Nehru said this new city would be "symbolic of the freedom of India, unfettered by the traditions of the past".

Starting in 1950 the city of Chandigarh was built from scratch on farmland and is unlike any other city in India. The broad boulevards, pedestrianised plazas and green spaces were designed to encourage a feeling of order and of being close to nature.

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 (AFP PHOTO / John Macdougall)

Transcript

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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 from the BBC World Service
0:46.0	with me Claire Bose.
0:48.0	It's 75 years since the founding of UNESCO,
0:51.0	the UN Scientific, cultural and educational body. In 2016, the
0:57.1	city of Chandigar in India was awarded UNESCO status. It was designed decades earlier by the world famous modernist architect
1:05.8	Le Corbusier who wanted to create what he called a city of the future for the
1:11.7	newly independent country.
1:15.0	I am a visual man, a man working with eyes and hands.
1:23.0	My research is directed towards what is the principal value in the life, the poetry.
1:31.0	Le Corbusier was a Swiss-French architect and urban planner.
1:36.4	In the first half of the 20th century, he pioneered a modernist approach to architecture,
1:42.2	rejecting elaborate decoration and embracing function.
1:46.8	Typically his houses had a geometrical frame, flat roofs, smooth surfaces and glass walls.
1:54.0	My cities are green cities.
1:57.0	My houses give sun, space and green.
2:00.0	He famously wrote that a house was a machine for living in and believed that with better planning
2:06.0	both houses and cities could enrich people's lives.
	...

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