Architectural Vision for Chandigarh
Chandigarh, India's first planned city is unlike other cities of Punjab and Haryana. Even though we have been visiting Punjab since our childhood, Chandigarh stands out as a modern city more organized than most cities of India. You can expect wide roads, greenery, and low-height concrete buildings. Le Corbusier, a French architect planned the city with his purist concepts keeping it simple in structure with an emphasis on lines. The city is divided into grids cut by the main road called Madhya Marg, which literally means the middle path. He was influenced by the philosophy of Buddhism of choosing the middle path to find balance. To spend a cultural day in Chandigarh one must visit the Capitol area to experience the architecture of Le Corbusier as well as the National museum and gallery which exhibits prints from Raja Ravi Verma, MF Hussain, and more, artefacts and scriptures, textiles and sculptures of different Indian historic periods.
Pierre Jeanneret was a Geneva born Swiss designer and architect. Along with his visionary cousin, better known as Le Corbusier, they became an unstoppable duo that collaborated on many projects together, including multiple residential spaces. As progress-minded visionaries in modern architecture, the two were invited to execute the master plan for the new city of Chandigarh in Punjab, India. Chandigarh represents an iconic fragment of modernist architecture, made for the purpose of showing India as a new and progressive independent country.
The cousins shared a common, modern, futuristic design sensibility and extensively worked on the important civic buildings of Chandigarh. Pierre Jeanneret proved himself particularly skilled at not only taking on ambitious projects but also connecting with the professionals and local community alike.
Jeanneret designs have great sensitivity to materials. This meant that he was mindful of the material and shape of furniture which should be both functional and comfortable, inviting and relaxing. He designed a range of crafts made of teak, from low-slung lounge chairs and armchairs with cane seats to desks and tables. The most renowned were the compass-shaped chairs for the city which quickly came to be known as the Chandigarh chairs. The iconic chairs were comfortable and sleek. They were handcrafted using natural teak and cane which was perfect for making a statement in both traditional and contemporary spaces. These patent chairs now refurbished as Jeanneret works are rarer to find today.
The Pierre Jeanneret house as a contrast to the general Punjabi aesthetic which is vibrant and bold was minimalistic and subtle. There are simple yet elegant details — including the perforated brick screens, and the geometric built-in niche frames and wall shelves. Furniture is often overlooked as a mundane feature at home, even more so in work spaces. But it is impossible to ignore the profound resonance it has in our lives. For instance, a chair is a familiar object. It is an object created for the human body. In fact, it is a tangible reminder of human occupation of space, a proxy for humans currently absent from the surroundings. This house is a proxy for his presence and his repertoire of work for the city. It has an almost surrealist aspect to it — a window shaped like an eye that is a call to look within oneself, the play of light and shadow co-existing quite effortlessly with the intended sophistication of the place.
Thus, an architecture of illusion evolved through the architect which valued phenomenal sensation over the object itself. With illusion as the basis of a new architecture, a dialectical relation with material reality was established. In their way of representing modern architecture, they transformed Chandigarh as a city. And left behind a legacy that is hard to miss from within the traditional socio-culture aspects of the place.
