#modernisttheory

[newtowntosmartcity]

Week 5 : At the nexus of Democracy, Planning and Experimentation

Jesfae John (jmj2196)

Following India’s Independence from the British rule in 1947 and the subsequent partition of the sub-continent into India and Pakistan, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of postcolonial India wanted to see an Indian city that was “free from the fetters of the past”. The city of Chandigarh was built from scratch near the foothills of the Himalayas, to replace the former capital of Lahore, lost to Pakistan thereby addressing the administrative vacuum that was felt in Punjab then. Chandigarh was the intended ‘solution’ to several daunting problems which confronted the newly-independent Indian government, some of which were relocating the refugees, reviving India’s forgotten identity with a modern twist.                                                        

Nehru initially aspired for a blend of Indianisation and westernization to come through in the city’s planning when he commissioned Albert Mayer, the American city planner who had some working experience in India. But, he was replaced by Le Corbusier’s team in 1951, after his colleague Nowicki’s sudden death and for reasons of steep fees charged for services rendered. Compelled by the in-house political parties for appointing a ‘modern’ European architect, Nehru was urged to commission Le Corbusier, the visionary modernist architect to take over the planning. “I have welcomed greatly one experiment,” Nehru once said, “and that is Chandigarh…. It hits you on the head and makes you think.”                                                                        

Le Corbusier was determined and most involved in revising Mayer’s plan to suit his vision. Ultimately, Le Corbusier presented a plan to Nehru which he called the “CIAM Town-Planning Grid” (CIAM being the Congrès Internationeaux d’Architecture Moderne). The basic layout relied on the original Mayer plan while only being able to refine certain details. It attempted to create a hierarchical system to order the citizens’ living, working, recreation, and communication. The city plan contained four main work areas: the Capitol, the University zone, the City Center, and an industrial area. 

The two architects’ ideologies clashed, and this difference in opinion is visible in Chandigarh’s eventual design. Mayer’s thinking took roots from the Garden City Movement, whereas Le Corbusier believed in the gridiron plan as the only correct way of approaching the modern problems of city planning. Le Corbusier felt that a thorough understanding of Indian history, society and culture was extraneous and irrelevant to the planning of Chandigarh, while Mayer understood the relative paucity of his own knowledge. Mayer had been very concerned with the socioeconomic factors and social customs, whereas Corbusier was more concerned with the physical look of the city – trying to avoid the appearance of an industrial town, with the monumentality of the building designs (images below), and with the separation of automobiles and pedestrians in daily life. Unfortunately, the monumentalism and hierarchic organization he so admired were among the principles from which Nehru’s government was attempting to move away, reminiscent as they were of the recent British Imperialist philosophy – but this was not apparent until well after the construction had begun.

Open Hand Monument - designed by Le Corbusier located in Sector 1

One of the many manhole covers in Chandigarh - designed by Corbusier

The hierarchic organization mimicked India’s traditional social structure of division by assigning homes according to administrative rank as opposed to the earlier practice of division by caste, community or language group. This was precisely the time the city’s design had to advocate for  the democratic, secular and equality ideals of free India. As per the design, the highest-paid officials and the largest houses were nearest the Capitol, and the greater the distance of a sector from it, the higher was its population density.

The main architects on the project were Pierre Jeanneret, and the English husband-and wife architects Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew. Fry and his wife were especially qualified for the project due to their considerable experience developing designs and technologies for tropical conditions in West Africa. Even under tight financial funding for the project, Drew, with her efforts of engaging the Indian community did design houses within the sectors in her responsibility that tapped into the sensibilities of ‘Indian’ homes factoring in the affordable housing component. What if this thread was pulled into the design of the city itself? What if Corbusier’s team worked in collaboration with one another, borrowing methods where and when it was deemed to be ideal? What if Chandigarh wasn’t just about being a modern urban showpiece to reinforce the images of certain individuals? What if there was more indian-ness injected into the city’s design?

The city’s plan was trying to solve Western urban problems, not Indian ones, and this is the root of many of Chandigarh’s issues. It was based on the consumption patterns, lifestyle and eccentricities of the industrialized West’s middle classes. The physical aspects of the city reflected the over-scaled streets for high-volume traffic (Indian culture favors small or animal-powered vehicles, and the climate demands small, shaded streets); single-family homes with gardens (Indians used to live in large multi-generation family units because of the prevalent joint family system, and preferred courtyards to gardens for climatic and maintenance reasons); and vast concrete-based open spaces (which in India’s climate are murderously hot, unpleasant, and therefore deserted). (Images below)            

Corbusier’s plan of a complex network of roads for the automobiles but even today, most ride by bike and autorickshaw

Huge landscaped gardens, reflective pools, concrete buildings - Corbusier’s plans devoid of sentimentality towards the Indian region.

I agree with Jackson and Perera’s argument that the city is not the sole creation of any one individual. Nevertheless, Chandigarh stands as a strong testimony of a period during which India made a bold attempt to make a break with her past within the confines of a socio‐urban experiment that included, along with an innovative master plan, modernist buildings, new land‐use patterns, provisions for education, recreation, medical and social services, the careful and deliberate inclusion of ideas that had their origin in a culture far removed from her own. Between the contested ideas of the western planners and the ambitious hopes of the Indian government officials, there is the account of a planned city and the overall influence of modernism on India.