The Capitol Complex of Chandigarh

We arrived in Chandigarh in the middle of heavy showers. Our plan for the half day before our flight back might have to be modified, we thought, but the morning was bright and sunny. I had vague ideas of hanging around the capitol complex taking photos of walls and shadows, but when we arrived I realized that like all government buildings these days, the place was out of bounds. The only way to get close was to join a guided tour through the complex. You register for the tour right outside the main gate to the complex. The process is simple, but the tour only shows you the buildings from a fair distance: a terrible way to look at a world heritage site.

Chandigarh is an architect’s delight. When the partition of India gave Lahore, the capital of Punjab, to Pakistan, the government of Punjab decided to build a new capital in the form of a Garden City. The project was given to Albert Mayer of New York, and his collaborator Maciej Nowicki. When the latter died in a plane crash in 1950, Mayer withdrew from the project. It was then taken up by Le Corbusier. His cousin Pierre Jeanneret, and the British architects Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew made up the rest of the initial architectural team. The project also eventually brought in a large number of Indian architects, some of whom went on to do very interesting work across India.

The Capitol complex is a lesson in Brutalist architecture from one of its creators. The High Court (above) and the Legislative Assembly (top two photos) face each other across a huge concrete apron. The colours of the painted pillars of the high court are reflected in the painting in the enormous ceremonial door of the Assembly. There is another decorative touch in the two modernist sculptures which top the Assembly. But apart from these small touches, the rest of the surfaces are what Le Corbusier called le béton brut, unpolished concrete which still bears the impression of the forms into which it was poured. A policeman guarding the High Court told me appreciatively how good the concrete was. “Touch it,” he said, “no cracks after 75 years.” This kind of quality seemed remarkable in the week when Delhi’s airport terminal collapsed months after it was built.

Meanwhile, the construction of the city was not going according to Le Corbusier’s plan. His interpretation of the meaning of a Garden City was to build high-rises in the middle of gardens. But this was not part of the original plan, and the local government demurred. The petulant architect therefore erected his Geometric Hill (which you can see in the background of the photo above) to visually detach the city and the capitol. The main structure in the photo is called the Tower of Shadows. It was built to track the movement of the sun and shadows during the year. The upturned roofs of the Assembly and Court show how important this was to the architect. The roof of the assembly throws a permanent shadow below it. The roof of the High Court is built so that at certain times of the day the entrance is spotlit by the sun.

Two other structures stand in the complex. Between the Assembly and the Court is the sunken amphitheater above which rises a sculpture which Le Corbusier considered central to his vision: an open hand which can also be seen as a dove. Le Corbusier had planned a grand palace for the governor here, but the budget could not be expanded to accommodate this grand design. The window in the wall behind the amphitheater, which now opens to the orchard nearby, once gave a view of the Himalayas. The other structure is a concrete cube standing opposite to the Geometric Hill called the Martyr’s Monument. These two structures constrain your lines of view so that from the plaza you only see the two grand buildings designed by Le Corbusier.