authorship and modernity in chandigarh: the ghandi bhavan and the kiran cinema designed by pierre...

Authorship and modernityin Chandigarh: the Ghandi Bhavanand the Kiran Cinema designed byPierre Jeanneret and EdwinMaxwell Fry

Iain Jackson, SoumyenBandyopadhyay

The Liverpool School of Architecture, University of

Liverpool, Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69 7ZN,

UK;Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

The Modernist city of Chandigarh was designed as a result of the 1948 Partition of India.

After the initial appointment of Albert Mayer as lead architect and planner, Le Corbusier

along with Pierre Jeanneret, Edwin Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew were selected. Whilst Le

Corbusier’s work in Chandigarh is relatively well known, the work of the other three

European architects has not received the same degree of attention. The aim of this paper

is to consider two prominent buildings, one designed by Jeanneret for Panjab University

and the other a cinema hall designed by Maxwell Fry. Fry’s cinema was one of the first

non-residential buildings to be constructed in the city and presents an inoffensive, even sym-

pathetic ‘established modernity’. Jeanneret’s building, designed almost ten years later,

begins to mark a shift from, even a rejection of the ‘stark brutality’ of the city towards an

expressive formalism, drawing from different historical sources to those found in Le Corbu-

sier’s work in nearby Sector-1. These buildings, it will be argued, represent key moments in

the history of the city and indeed the development of modernism and the avant-garde.

Setting the scene: Le Corbusier and the other

European architects of Chandigarh

The history, or rather a particular history of Chandi-

garh, India, has been extensively told and retold,

beginning with the partition of India in 1948 and

the search for a new Punjabi Capital. The aim of

this paper is to discuss two of the lesser-known

architectural contributors to the city, Edwin

Maxwell Fry and Pierre Jeanneret, and in particular

two buildings they designed in Chandigarh. The

building by Fry is a cinema hall completed in 1956,

and the Ghandi Bhavan (a Ghandian philosophy

school) by Jeanneret was completed a decade later

in 1966.1 Housing was the main concern of both

architects in Chandigarh, but it is through the

limited number of civic and public commissions

that a more experimental and expressive architec-

ture is revealed.

The authorship of Chandigarh is generally associ-

ated only with Le Corbusier. Whilst he was respon-

sible for the master planning and the design of

several government structures, there are many

other significant ‘authors’ and ‘designers’ whose

contributions have received little discussion to

date. In addition to Le Corbusier and the aforemen-

tioned Pierre Jeanneret and Edwin Maxwell Fry there

was also Jane Drew, yet the city remains, certainly in

print, characterised as a Corbusian scheme.

Evenson provided an early, essential documen-

tation of the city whilst it was still under construction

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# 2009 The Journal of Architecture 1360-2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602360903358011

and largely ‘untested’ by any inhabitants.2 She

included the contributions of the extended design

team, but the Sector-1 buildings designed by Le

Corbusier received the most attention. This pre-

cedent has continued; however, recent literature

has broadened to include other architects.

Kalia’s extensive history of Chandigarh introduces

many of these other creative participants3 and more

recently Kiran Joshi devoted volume 1 of the ency-

clopaedic Documenting Chandigarh series to the

contributions of Pierre Jeanneret, Edwin Maxwell

Fry and Jane Drew.4 Perera takes a more critical

approach in discussing the planning of the city and

challenges the misconception of Le Corbusier as

the sole heroic planner.5 He asserts that the planning

of the city was more of a hybrid solution (a claim

bolstered by Kapur6), inherited from the American

architect, Albert Mayer and the Indian Engineer,

P.L. Varma, rather than solely Le Corbusier’s.

There have been other works that discuss

additional Chandigarh ‘authors’, such as the

seminal research by Madhu Sarin on illegal settle-

ments and the inadequacies of the plan to the

accommodation of essential labourers.7 Other

additions to the Chandigarh plan, such as Nek

Chand’s Rock Garden, have also begun to receive

academic attention,8 further contributing to a

fuller understanding of this unpredictable ‘living

experiment in the field of contemporary planning

and architecture’.9 Sarin’s work marks a decisive

moment and the quality of Chandigarh was assessed

not only for its architectural merits, but also for its

practicality. Le Corbusier’s contribution began to

receive a more critical appraisal as did the wider

conception of Chandigarh. The discussions on

Chandigarh and Le Corbusier became polarised. It

was adored by visiting architects and indeed by

most of the residents, and yet despised by visitors

from the West as a clinical and abstract imposition

on the people of India.10 In praise of the city there

are the more familiar architectural monographs

focused, for the most part, on Le Corbusier.11

Most of the authors discussed above, plus many

other designers, architects, academics, activists

and writers attended a conference in Chandigarh

in 1999, to commemorate the city’s first fifty

years. The discussions ranged from the anecdotal

and sentimental through to proposals for redesign-

ing Sector-1: the extensive proceedings were pub-

lished in 2002.12 The Conference constituted a

closing chapter on the discussions and debates

surrounding Chandigarh with all parties present to

voice and to respond to concerns, although the

verbose commentaries had little real impact.

It is only recently that more critical research has

taken place that does not seek to moralise and to

question the procurement of the city, but looks

more towards understanding Chandigarh’s position

within the cultural weave of a post-colonial

nation.13 Prakash in particular begins to discuss

the position of Chandigarh and Le Corbusier’s

approach from a post-colonial perspective as well

as invoking the shift in ‘modernism’ towards an

historicised formalism. A position reinforced

through Le Corbusier’s decision to allow the village

of Kansal to remain near the Sector-1 buildings

whilst all other villages were demolished to make

way for the new city.14

Beyond these influential works there remain

substantial gaps with regard to the specific

688

Authorship and modernity in

Chandigarh: Pierre Jeanneret and

Edwin Maxwell Fry

Iain Jackson, Soumyen Bandyopadhyay

interpretation of key buildings designed by the other

members of the design team. The city is treated as a

single entity rather than as a collection of individu-

ally designed buildings. These structures (along

with Louis Kahn’s in Ahmedabad) set a

particular course for Modern architecture within

India, directly influencing the first generation of

post-independence Indian architects15 as well as

forming a new aesthetic and taste upon which

subsequent works would be judged.16

This broad and far-reaching topic requires con-

siderable research. A study of Modernist architec-

ture produced throughout the Subcontinent

during the first thirty years following Independence

will be the focus of future study, building on

the work of Bahga and Bahga, and Lang, Desai,

et al. 17 In addition, the work of Fry will also be

the subject of future research drawing on the

extensive archives of the RIBA.

The City of Chandigarh

Chandigarh is located in Punjab, Northern India and

was created following the Act of Partition in 1948

when India lost the city of Lahore to Pakistan

(Fig. 1). The city is laid out on a grid-plan composed

of ‘Sectors’ most of which are 1200 m � 800 m and

is arranged according to the ‘four functions’ of the

CIAM ‘charter of Athens’. In order to construct

the city approximately twenty-four villages were

destroyed (Fig. 2). The first Sector contains the

government buildings and runs along the northern

edge of the city. Running centrally down the plan is

the ‘leisure valley’, a green space for exercise and

relaxation. Le Corbusier wrote a document called

the ‘Statue of the Land’, which contains all the

planning and architectural rules that the city was to

be governed by, as summarised in the City Edict.18

The aim was to create a city, ‘offering all amenities

of life to the poorest of the poor of its citizens to lead a

dignified life’.19 Despite these zealous attempts and

legislation to control the aesthetics and ‘harmony’

of the city there have been many transgressions,

not least by government. In recent times, the chief

architects have become more liberal towards the

personalisation of property and the notion that not

everyone wants to live in Modernist villas (Fig. 3).20

Architectural hierarchy or remote

collaboration: the quest for recognition

Before the Indian representatives approached Le

Corbusier they visited Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew

in London. Had the pair been able to ‘drop every

Figure 1. Location of

Chandigarh within the

Indian Subcontinent.

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other obligation and accept the appointments,

Corbusier would not have been approached’.21

Drew was ‘foremost in urging acceptance’ of the

commission and suggested that Le Corbusier

should also join the design team; however, Fry saw

the collaboration with Le Corbusier as an ‘unpredict-

able portion of misery for me’.22 In his writings Fry

appears as a reluctant participant, handing in his

Figure 2. Plan of

Chandigarh and the

destroyed villages,

erased to make way for

the new capital.

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


notice on at least one occasion whilst in India over

difficulties with the ‘evasive and autocratic’ Chief

Engineer, Varma, and ‘neglect’ from the Administra-

tor, Thapar. He also had the appointment contract

re-drawn so that ‘we [ie, the architects] would not

work under engineers’.23 Upon the first meeting

with Le Corbusier in India, Fry explained the design

process as a ‘difficult situation. My French was

unequal to the occasion. Jeanneret was super-

numerary, and Thapar only half aware of what

was going forward. Corbusier held the crayon and

was in his element’.24 He goes on to describe Jean-

neret as ‘not the happiest of collaborators, but a

ceaseless worker in the good cause’.25

For Maxwell Fry, the enterprise with Le Corbusier

and Jeannerret was to be communal and collabora-

tive, but this was, of course, not how Le Corbusier

saw things. Fry rebelled, citing the CIAM notion of

the ‘spirit of teamship’ in a letter during May,

1951. He writes that he was ‘shocked’ by Le

Figure 3. A Rejection of

the city edict and the

adoption of Greek

revival.

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Corbusier’s direction and, again implying that he

may leave the project, ‘if we are to continue

together, I would like to discuss the basis of collab-

oration which will satisfy us. . ...there is no reason

why a group of buildings should not be designed

by a group of CIAM architects, but I am opposed

to the idea of designing individual buildings in a

group or of merely carrying out your designs’.26

Le Corbusier replied describing Fry’s letter as

‘impolite’, but conceded that Fry could design

what he liked and suggested drawing up an a-z

inventory of buildings so that they could select

commissions.

It was eventually decided by the four architects

that the broad plan would remain and that Le Cor-

busier should concentrate on the major adminis-

tration buildings (working from Paris) leaving the

majority of the city sectors to the other three archi-

tects (working from Chandigarh and individually).

Whilst the notion of teamwork and collaboration

was theoretically part of the CIAM agenda, in

reality activities were highly individualistic. For

Drew this affected the unity of the city design:

‘one of the failings of Sector-22 is that the housing

has been designed by three architects and there is

some diversity of experience, each architect having

a different sense of space and order’.27 She goes

on to conclude that it might have been better to

vary the architect for each sector but not within

any one sector.

Sector-22: City Prototype, Maxwell Fry

and Drew

Sector-22, located one block south of the main

commercial and shopping district (Sector-17), was

the first sector to be built. It was largely designed

by Jane Drew and was to be a mixed-use high-

density sector with shops, market, housing,

schools, health facilities and public squares

(Fig. 4).28 Its northern edge faces onto the bus ter-

minus in Sector-17 making it a key entrance point

to the city, having one of the highest population

densities.29 The sector has an internal figure-of-

eight road (a V5) and faces inwards from the

main traffic roads that enclose it (V3s).30 Drew’s

aim was to provide lots of green space for families

and a centralised hub containing the market. The

large population and the early construction of

this sector established it as ‘subsidiary to the

town centre’.31 In addition to the housing, a

‘bazaar street’ runs centrally through the sector

along the east-west axis, ‘the bigger shops and

cinema are grouped to form a piazza off which

come the tiny traditional bazaar streets’.32 The

cinema mentioned by Drew was designed by

Maxwell Fry, and is the only such structure

outside of Sector-17.

The area and cost of the housing design was

linked to civil service rank and respective salary:

‘this new economic basis of neighbourhoods,

reflecting a vigorous hierarchy of the civil service,

has created a new equally formidable, “caste

system”. Thirteen categories of government

housing were designed. . .each corresponding to a

rank in the government bureaucracy’.33 This was a

system that grouped different social groups

together, their only common relationship being

their salaries. Secondary to socio-economic status

were materials and climate: however, Fry claimed

that ‘climate has been the determining factor in

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


Chandigarh architecture, and so it should be. There

can be no surer way to a suitable architecture, and

one that is in accord with the deepest realities of

the country; for it is climate that dictates agriculture,

moulds customs and affects even religion. Climate is

a great element in India’(Fig. 5).34

Figure 4. Plan of

Sector-22.

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The Kiran Cinema: providing glamour

in Sector-22

The front elevation of the cinema is the most

dominant, and the building is not really to be

experienced or viewed from any other angle. The

facade acts almost like a cinema screen, facing

onto its public audience: the shops and car park.

The material palette of the sector is largely brick

with concrete frames, against which the rendered

concrete facade and green ceramic cladding of

the cinema is in stark contrast (Fig. 6). Fry

enjoyed the ‘grandeur’ of the Sector-1 ‘monu-

ments’ but stated that ‘nobody is going to make

me admire an untreated face of inert concrete’,35

a medium preferred by Le Corbusier and Jeanneret.

Despite this committed belief, he considered the

medium of concrete to be a ‘revolutionary material

par exellence. . .capable of the long spans, the

cantilevers and projecting slabs that could marry

with plate glass and metal. . . decisively (to) break

with the tradition of brick on brick, the static wall,

the pitched roof. . .’.36

Fry was a leader in British Modernism and co-

founder of the group MARS37 and had rejected

his earlier classical approach. With some fervour

he writes that ‘fiercely and in the sprit of revolt,

we designed our first buildings, searching for a

new set of proportions arising from the structures

no longer dependent on mass, no longer domi-

nated by the wall. . .owing nothing to Vitruvius’.38

The Kiran Cinema, however, lacks the drama dis-

cussed above, and is completely dominated by

the mass of the walls and roof, owing almost

everything to Vitruvius. The shift away from

these ambitions was a concession made by Fry

to the climate that ‘strained the system to its

uttermost’. The ‘system’ in this case was the

CIAM Manifesto. For Fry, ‘protection from the

sun and from the dust-laden winds of the hot

season was the architectural imperative, the rest

was secondary’.39 It is also likely that this

approach was more sympathetic to his ‘Modern-

ism with Ancestry’40 background, a more polite

version of the timber-cast European concrete41

Figure 5. Housing in

Sector-22 designed to

modify the climate.

Figure 6. Front facade

of the Kiran Cinema.

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


and experimental avant-garde approach of Le

Corbusier.

The cinema is the main focus of the central

square, which loosely resembles a piazza: the

Romanesque church replaced with the cinema

hall. The splayed gable walls and curved roof pro-

trude beyond the front facade and this compo-

sition, a proscenium arch, frames the ‘KIRAN’

neon sign. The entrance portal is also located

directly below the sign raised up off the ground

by three steps. The steps are the only acknowledge-

ment the building makes at ground level, the two

gables sitting heavily on the ground plane

without any variation in the wall profile. The

symmetry of the front facade is broken by single-

storey offices and shop that wrap around onto

the side elevation, softening the corner and

attempting to respond to the public square

(Fig. 7). This single-storey aspect, and its sunscreen

in particular, is an endeavour to link the cinema to

its otherwise isolated neighbours. The screen is

extended into a canopy; however, the recessed

position of the shelter fails to link the cinema to

the shops with any strength.

The cinema should have taken a more prominent

role in the public square, perhaps being positioned

on the central axis, with the commercial activities

on either side like the Neelam Cinema in Sector-17

(Fig. 8). The position of the Kiran on the corner

plot contributes to its aloof remoteness and fails to

create any hierarchy or spatial clarity within the

square. The blank side elevation that faces onto the

(V4) road ignores this main thoroughfare, offering

only a rendered facade to what could have been

a ‘celebrated entrance’ (or ‘architectural prome-

nade’)42 into the main public area as well as offering

some relief from the repetitive shop facades.

Cinema typology

The provision of a cinema in the first sector is

important: it presented visual mass media,

capable of creating a common culture more

quickly than a travelling show or narration, and

was also a place for broadcasting newsreels,

informing as well as creating the new Indian

public. The Indian film industry also promoted

nationalist objectives at that time, through films

such as Boot Polish (1954) and Mother India

(1957), capable of reaching and impacting upon

large and disparate audiences.43 The inclusion of

a cinema at this early stage of Chandigarh’s

development was indicative of the desire to keep

the new city culturally linked with the rest of the

country. The central white advertisement area at

the Kiran Cinema would also have been a place

for the hand-painted signs that have become

synonymous with Bollywood and Indian visual

culture. Fry created a specific place for these

advertisements not present in previous cinema

types. He allowed the building to address the

public square not only through its form, but also

through changing signage, which has subsequently

become such an important part of the Indian urban

fabric.44

In contrast with the economically driven residen-

tial designs, the Kiran Cinema is more playful and

civic in its role as the key structure within Sector-

22. Its curved futuristic form with a large span is

daring and the addition of colour into the otherwise

natural hues of brick and concrete immediately sets

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Figure 7. Ground Floor

plan of the Kiran

Cinema.

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the structure apart as something special. For the

ordinary resident it would be the grandest building

they would enter. Cinema halls are deployed as

symbols of modernity and progress and as such

were endowed with flamboyant names, invoking

the fantastical and the magical. The word ‘Kiran’

in Hindi means ‘beam of light’, a phrase literally

invoking enlightenment and with religious

connotations, forward-looking, illuminating the

darkness.45 It also comments on the aspirations of

Chandigarh as a progressive city. Most early visitors

would be shown around Sector-22 as a ‘model

sector’ whilst the rest of the city was still being

constructed.46 It required something more than

the rather drab low-paid worker housing and

markets to ‘show-off’ and to indicate a thriving

town ‘which could express the new state of

Punjab’.47 The inoffensive, welcoming face of the

cinema could help to ‘sell’ the city both politically

and economically.48

However, the modernity invoked by Fry at the

Kiran Cinema alludes to a different source and

takes another trajectory to the one described by Le

Corbusier through his celebrated Sector-I projects.

One can detect a distinctive ‘Art Deco’ influence, a

movement that emerged in the two decades pre-

ceding World War II and provided yet another

strand in the development of the Modern move-

ment. The understandable Art Deco influence on

Indian metropolitan cinema halls and theatres built

in the pre-Independence era, extended well into

the 1950s. This continued influence was anticipated

at the dawn of Independence in an artist’s

impression published in an Indian architectural

journal representing the future of urban India,

replete with Art Deco and Bauhaus-style edifices

and large piazzas ordered on an orthogonal grid.49

Significantly, this, by then somewhat obsolete

image of modernity, was framed by the ruinous

remains of a colonial structure. The ‘ruin’ in the

foreground appears to be a world of recreation;

it depicts Indian couples dressed in European

attire — perhaps promenading, courting or relax-

ing — looking, as it were, back into the future.

Curiously enough, this ‘finished/ruin’ urban

imagery is suggestive of the difference between

Fry’s and Le Corbusier’s approaches in Chandigarh.

In introducing Art Deco influence into his

Figure 8. The Neelam

Cinema in Sector-17.

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architecture, Fry took a significant step away from

the specific modernism that was being proposed

by Le Corbusier and its canons, in which the ruin

or the unfinished played a significant role.50 A

significant departure from Corbusian authorship

was therefore firmly established. This ‘finished’

modernist imagery, complete with its dominant

symmetry, was more readily intelligible and there-

fore acceptable to the popular psyche.

Shifts in the ‘Chandigarh Style’

Sector-22 represents the establishment of Chandi-

garh: as the first sector it informed the architectural

orthodoxy for the rest of the city (figs 9, 10).

However, Chandigarh in the mid-1960s was a

different place to the small, developing town of

the mid-1950s. There was more wealth, new

clients (such as industry, a university, large private

residences in addition to government buildings)

and a considerable population explosion demanding

new buildings.51 There was a new aspiration for

the city beyond Nehruvian-socialist ambitions, and

a series of modifications were made to the original

designs to suit the migrant inhabitants.

Vast tracts of unused/undeveloped plots of land

created by the architects and planners to allow for

future expansion were occupied as housing/

market areas, and certain sectors became ‘specialist’

areas for particular trades and services,52 as in many

other Indian cities, but undermining the architects’

design intentions. The city was driven by the

market economy with only a loose framework

provided by the architects. In many ways the

low-density minimal intervention of the designers

enabled Chandigarh to respond quickly to market

Figure 9. Classic

Chandigarh style:

Sector 17.

Figure 10. Classic

Chandigarh style:

Sector 17 Fountain.

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


shifts and for new businesses to establish them-

selves in dedicated sectors. In addition to the

economic and population shifts there were consi-

derable amendments in the architectural ambitions

of the city.

Jeanneret decided to remain in Chandigarh after

1954, at which point the other architects had fin-

ished their contract and returned to Europe. He

was appointed the first chief architect of the city

and continued to oversee all planning applications

and to tutor and practice with the emerging

Indian architects. Very little had been written

about Jeanneret, either by himself or others, until

Joshi, and Bahga and Bahga.53 In 2005 an inter-

national conference was held at the Chandigarh

School of Architecture entitled ‘Remembering

Pierre Jeanneret’: some of the papers were pub-

lished in the AþD Journal.54 Jeanneret did write

one article whilst in India for the art journal Marg

in which he commented on his growing interest

in the ‘everyday’, the ordinary and the overlooked.

He discusses found stones gathered from local

riverbeds and metal off-cuts from building sites

that ‘rival abstract art’.55 These observations were

manifest in his architectural proposals of the

1960s, the most prominent being the Gandhi

Bhavan for the Panjab University.

The Gandhi Bhavan

The Gandhi Bhavan is located in Sector-14, on the

western edge of Chandigarh (Fig. 11). The Panjab

University occupies the entire sector, creating a dis-

tinct site running alongside the Leisure Valley and

the cultural centre of Sector-10 (Fig. 12). The

sector has a very low density with too few buildings

to justify its expansive area. The ghettoised aca-

demic faculties are remote from each other and,

like the rest of the city, lacking metropolitan

Indian life. Architecturally, the Bhavan is the

central feature of the campus. The architect, in

acknowledgement of the multiple routes towards

the building, has created a complex facade

arrangement that eliminates notions of ‘front’ or

‘back’ elevations. The building is thus intended to

be experienced from multiple angles, each yielding

a similar view and dismissing conventional architec-

tural hierarchies relating to grand entrances and

formal axes.

The structure has load-bearing walls, in contrast

to the column and beam format largely found in

other Chandigarh buildings, and in this sense it

relates to the Kiran Cinema. However, unlike the

Cinema the Bhavan is concerned with interior

light, reflections and shadows (figs 13, 14). In a

similar vein to the Cinema, the Bhavan provides a

focal point for the sector, the more utilitarian

hostels and lecture theatres fade into the

Figure 11. The Gandhi

Bhavan designed by

Pierre Jeanneret.

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background with the glowing white walls of the

Bhavan attracting attention. The function of the

building is almost irrelevant and quite banal

(consisting of a lecture theatre and library): it is the

form that proclaims the message — this is building

as ‘advertisement’ or ‘land mark’, a formalist monu-

ment to the Father of the Nation.

In plan, the building is arranged according to

rotational symmetry in three distinct zones referring

to the wheel — perhaps even the spinning wheel

Figure 12. Plan of

Sector-14.

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


which had such symbolic significance in Gandhi’s

vision of self-sufficiency, and the cyclical nature of

Hinduism (Fig. 15). It invokes the celestial, with

light channelled through clerestory windows and

floor-to-ceiling glazed walls. Apparently ‘floating’

on its reflecting pool, the visitor enters the building

across a bridge (Fig. 16). The entire journey

becomes an introspective process as one moves

towards a pivoting entrance portal, alongside

which a sign reads, ‘Truth is God’.

The bridge prolongs the entrance threshold and

dictates the only path towards the building, invok-

ing religious metaphor and theatrical narrative

through the crossing made by the visitor. The

water also sets the building apart from the everyday,

making it distinct and ‘sacred’ amongst the secular

and ‘profane’. Centrally sited within the a-historical

and scientific University campus, function and econ-

omics give way to the playful and the extravagant.

The use of landscape, water and built form in this

Figure 13. Interior light

in the Bhavan

(photograph by John

McNally).

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manner invokes the agendas of Sector-1, the

construction of which Jeanneret supervised on site

for Le Corbusier (Fig. 17).

The Bhavan is clad in cement panels with white

marble aggregate causing the building to ‘glow’.

The building was originally to be clad, like the rest

of the campus, in red sandstone (Fig. 18).

However, one of Jeanneret’s students suggested

this alternative material to contrast with the sur-

rounding buildings, citing Salim Chisti’s tomb at

Fatehpur Sikri as a precedent.56 The tomb is clad

in ornate white marble to contrast with the red

sandstone city (Fig. 19). The connection is obscure:

however, analogies between the sixteenth-century

Mughal city and Chandigarh suggest a genealogy,

a recreation of an imagined triumphant past. The

result however, is a recreation of the ruined

aesthetic, the anarchic planning of the desolate

Fatehpur Sikri (abandoned shortly after its construc-

tion) is recreated anachronistically in Chandigarh.57

Fry also recalls how Le Corbusier was ‘strongly

affected by Mogul architecture’ and utilised the

‘parasol’ roof design of the Mogul palaces at the

High Court in Sector-1.58

Nehru’s decree that Chandigarh should be ‘unfet-

tered by the past’ was now being overlooked as

historical references, if not forms, were introduced.

Fatehphur Sikri is a pre-modern, pre-British refer-

ence, the city is also considered to be an embracing

blend of Islamic and Hindu styles, an apt message

for the fragmenting and increasingly sectarian pro-

blems in Punjab. Jeanneret was a socialist, sympath-

etic to India: in citing this precedent he was both

Figure 14a. Interior

light in the Bhavan

(photograph by John

McNally).

Figure 14b. Interior

light in the Bhavan

(photograph by Chris

Barker).

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


Figure 15. Plan of the

Gandhi Bhavan.

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promoting the nationalist-unionist cause and yet

from the outside marking a shift towards the

‘brutal’, ‘primitive’ and ‘ruined’. The stark and

vacant setting of Fatehpur Sikri must have appealed

to Jeanneret’s Modernist aesthetic (Fig. 20), but

rather than the stark Acropolitan ruins that Le Cor-

busier so admired,59 Fatehpur Sikri is a complex

urban ensemble with highly ornate elements and

intricate patterns. It is not the pure white bones of

Ancient Greece, nor does it have similar precise

proportions, rather a more fluid, even bastardised

arrangement of structures and references.

Conclusion: context, abstraction and revived

historical references

Maxwell Fry brought Modernist architecture that

responded in part to the climate, but less so in

non-residential buildings. Fry could be considered

Figure 16. Entrance

bridge at the Gandhi

Bhavan (photograph by

John McNally).

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


‘the establishment’, concerned with materials,

climate and buildability; he wanted to consider a

building’s ‘underlying function in terms of the

human and mechanical working. . .the circulation

in and about them, their contact with the

elements as with the surrounding in which they

are set’.60 He also expressed an interest in the

site, prior to the construction of Chandigarh allud-

ing to a concern for context and something he

classified as ‘instinctive architecture’. He specifi-

cally refers to the existing buildings, ‘the very

villages we destroyed to make room for the new

city of Chandigarh were the chief solace of our

hard-working life there. . .’.61 He goes on to

describe how the natural resources of the site

determined the village layouts as ‘direct responses

to simple set[s] of conditions with no mathemat-

ical exactitude’.62

Figure 17. The High

Court in Sector-1

(reflection pool).

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Drew also expresses a sensitivity to the existing

site conditions, modifying her proposals to retain a

‘beautiful existing road’ in Sector-22 and to ‘keep

the trees on this beautiful road and yet not disturb

the master plan of the sector’.63 Other than this

singular concession made by Drew and the

comfort from the villages drawn by Fry, no other

traces of the existing conditions were retained. For

Le Corbusier the tapestries, enamel and concrete

relief works he provided at the High Court and

Assembly building are his response to the India he

perceived on his brief visits to the site (figs 21, 22,

23). His aim was not to accommodate the existing,

but rather to take the role of the artist by comment-

ing upon and interpreting that reality through visual

media.

Jeanneret at the Bhavan is looking directly

towards the historical — a glorious, if distant

and invented memory of the past — whilst

attempting to escape the ‘arid functional phase’

of a previous modernism.64 This is not an architec-

ture that mimics a stylised caricature of India (like

Lutyens in Delhi and arguably in the surface motifs

used by Le Corbusier), but rather the Western

avant garde absorbing the ‘primitive’ and re-

presenting an abstract version back to the locals.

This does, of course, have neo-colonialist under-

tones.

Sarin claimed that concessions were made to

Jeanneret at that time ‘because he was a

foreigner’, and a Western one at that. The

‘majority of the proposals sent through him were

sanctioned by the government. During his time,

even the Indian architects got used to getting

away with extravagant proposals on the basis of

their architectural merits. . ...the architects role

became associated with that of the eccentric,

only preoccupied with design considerations,

who could wave other equally important matters

aside with arrogance’.65 Sarin illustrates the coloni-

alist relationship that still existed. The Indians

looked towards the Westerners not only for tech-

nological and formal solutions, but also for a

means for constructing their own identity and to

some extent history.

Whilst Sarin makes important points and the

architecture certainly took more experimental devi-

ations from the stringent rules of the City Edict,

the shift in the architecture at the time could be

indicative of something more than ‘eccentricity’

and an arrogant concern for unusual form. Jeanner-

ret, now free from developing his cousin’s designs

into buildable solutions, began to take influence

from other sources (such as nature, the found and

the quotidian), even discontinuing the Modulor in

his designs (a device that Maxwell Fry also refused

to adopt outright).

Figure 18. Museum of

Art, Panjab University,

red sandstone cladding

(photograph by John

McNally).

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


It was the ‘one-off’ buildings that enabled a more

expressive and theatrical architecture to develop.

Amongst the inexpensive housing and repetitive

forms used for shops the architects exploited oppor-

tunities to create ‘landmarks’, to act as signage and

to aid navigation.

When Fry revisited the city, he described the main

shopping centre in Sector-17 as ‘stark brutality’ and

‘devoid of street level activity and treeless’, the

forms being ‘unidentifiable blankness that verged

on the vacantly forbidding’ (Fig. 24).66 It was

perhaps this revisit to Chandigarh that prompted

Fry to reflect on the villages that once occupied

the site. Whilst the existing conditions were not inte-

gral to the proposals, we see through these brief

mentions a sensitivity and a regard for the specific

site conditions.

The Bhavan demonstrates a later approach, a

richer palate of materials and a desire for more

formally expressive structures, building on the theatri-

cality of Le Corbusier’s work in Sector-1 but with more

subtle reference to India.67 The Bhavan is not about

bovine and village life as sketched by Le Corbusier,68

nor the reluctant modernism of Fry: wanting to be

progressive and yet sentimentally comforted by

Indian village architecture. The Bhavan’s spiky profile,

perhaps borrowed from the metal off-cuts shown

in Marg (Fig. 25), is more of a refined primitivism.

Other similar objects were collected and photo-

graphed by Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, such

Figure 19. Salim Chisti’s

tomb at Fatehpur Sikri.

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as bones and ‘compressed metal’,69 marking not only

an interest in the geometrical and precise, but also in

the ‘natural’, ‘fluid’ and ‘primitive’.70 The Bhavan

adopts some of these traits as well as historical refer-

ences, although most visitors will not make the con-

nection and the rotational symmetry in plan is

equally elusive without detailed study. Perhaps the

Bhavan is egocentric shape-making by a European

architect living the highlife as a post-Independence

nabob (finally in receipt of praise previously showered

on his younger cousin).

The European architects came together through

the CIAM, but that seemed distant and irrelevant

as the Chandigarh project developed. The architects

in Chandigarh looked less towards materials,

functionalism and manifestos and more towards

the site, formalist narratives and abstract historical

references.

Figure 20. Fatehpur

Sikri looking stark and

primitively modern.

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


Acknowledgements

We offer many thanks to the staff at the Kiran

Cinema and the Ghandi Bhavan for giving access

to the buildings, and for being so generous with

their time during our stays in Chandigarh. We

thank also Professor Joshi and the staff at the

Chandigarh School of Architecture for giving

access to their library and the students from the

Liverpool School of Architecture for generously

allowing us to use their photographs: in particular,

Chris Barker and John McNally. (All other photo-

graphs and drawings are by Iain Jackson.)

Figure 21. Tapestry in

the High Court

designed by Le

Corbusier.

Figure 22. Cast

concrete motif on the

wall of the Assembly

Building.

Figure 23. Enamel door

to the Assembly

Building, painted by Le

Corbusier.

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Notes and references1. The masterplan of the city was arranged on a grid

pattern, with each ‘block’ numerically labelled and

termed ‘sectors’. Each sector has standard entry/

exit roads: however, the internal arrangement is

unique and determined by the specific housing

density or functional requirements of that sector. An

hierarchy exists whereby lower-density housing is

positioned closer to Sector-1 (the head of the city

containing the government buildings) with increasing

housing density the further one travels away from

the head.

2. N. Evenson, Chandigarh (Los Angeles, University of

California Press, 1966).

3. R. Kalia, Chandigarh: the making of an Indian City

(New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1987).

4. Joshi informed Jackson that she intends Volume II to

cover the work of Indian architects (interview with

Figure 24. Sector-17,

now with trees and

advertisements but still

arguably ‘stark’.

Figure 25. Metal off-

cut selected by

Jeanneret, said to ‘rival

abstract art’

(photograph by

Jeanneret, originally

published in Marg,

1961).

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


Joshi at the Chandigarh School of Architecture, March,

2005).

5. N. Perera, ‘Contesting Visions: Hybidity, Liminality and

Authorship of the Chandigarh Plan’, Planning Perspec-

tives, 19 (2004), pp. 175–199.

6. V. Kapur, ‘Hybridity: Different Moments, Diverse

Effects’ (unpublished PhDThesis; Pennsylvania, Univer-

sity of Pennsylvania, Architecture, 2001).

7. M. Sarin, Planning and the Urban Poor: the Chandi-

garh experience 1951–1975 (London, University

College London, 1975) and M. Sarin, Urban planning

in the third world: the Chandigarh experience

(London, Mansell, 1982).

8. S. Bandyopadhyay, S. and I. Jackson, The Collection, the

Ruin and the Theatre: architecture, sculpture and land-

scape in Nek Chand’s Rock Garden, Chandigarh (Liver-

pool, Liverpool University Press, 2007); see also L. Peiry

and P. Lespinasse, Nek Chand’s Outsider Art: the Rock

Garden of Chandigarh (Paris, Flammarion, 2005).

9. M. N. Sharma (1999; proceedings published in 2002),

‘Chandigarh: early memories’, in Celebrating Chandigarh:

50 years of the idea (Chandigarh, Chandigarh Perspectives,

Mapin Publishing, 2002).

10. See G. Rawinsky, ‘A Fantasy Land, or the soul of the

city? The Nek Chand Rock Garden, Chandigarh,

India’, The Follies Journal (2003), pp. 43–52, and

S. Irish, ‘Intimacy and Monumentality in Chandigarh,

North India: Le Corbusier’s Capitol Complex and Nek

Chand Saini’s Rock Garden’, Journal of Aesthetic

Education, 38.2 (2004), pp. 105–115.

11. W. J. R. Curtis, Le Corbusier Ideas and Forms (London,

PhaidonPress,1986)andK.Frampton,LeCorbusier:Archi-

tect and Visionary (London, Thames and Hudson, 2001).

12. J. Takhar, ed., Celebrating Chandigarh : 50 years of the

idea (Chandigarh, Chandigarh Perspectives, Mapin

Publishing, 2002).

13. SeeC.GordonandK.Kilian,ANQdocument—Chandigarh:

Forty Years after Le Corbusier (Amsterdam, Architectura &

Natura Press, 1992) and V. Prakash, Le Corbusier’s

Chandigarh: The struggle forModernity inpostcolonial

India (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2002).

14. The Village of Kansal is largely unchanged and has

not become ‘engulfed’ by the city because of its location

near to Sector-1. It can be easily accessed by going

through a hole in the fence near the Assembly building.

15. See S. Bahga and S. Bahga, Le Corbusier and Pierre

Jeanneret: Footprints on the sand of Indian Architec-

ture (New Delhi, Galgotia Publishing Company,

2000) and S. Bahga and S. Bahga, et. al., Modern

Architecture in India (New Delhi, Galgotia Publishing

Company, 1993).

16. It was Jeanneret, Fry and Drew, who were based in

Chandigarh, that taught the Indian architects directly,

whereas Le Corbusier only visited site in March and

September.

17. S. Bahga and S. Bahga, et al., Modern Architecture in

India, op. cit. and J. Lang, M. Desai, et al., Architecture

and independence: the search for identity — India

1880–1980 (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1997).

18. Le Corbusier wrote the Statute of the Land on the

17th December, 1951, based on the concepts of

the CIAM 1933 Athens Charter: see Aesthetic

Legislation: Documentation of Urban Controls in

Chandigarh [1951–2001] (Chandigarh, Chandigarh

Perspectives, Chandigarh College of Architecture,

2002).

19. Ibid.

20. Jackson interviewed the then Chief Architect, Mrs.

Renu Sengal, in 2005 about the ‘transgressions’ in

the residential sector. The architect argued that

whilst these designs may not be to everybody’s taste,

the owners should have the right to build houses in

these styles (interview held at the Chief Architect’s

Office, March, 2005).

21. Fry and Drew were not the first architects to

be approached. The American, Albert Mayer had

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already designed a master-plan for the city. For further

details about the pre-Le Corbusier plan see Kalia

(1987), op. cit.

22. E. M. Fry, ‘Le Corbusier at Chandigarh’, in, R. Walden,

The Open Hand: Essays on Le Corbusier (Cambridge,

Mass., The MIT Press, 1977), p. 352.

23. Ibid., p. 353.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. E. M. Fry, 1951, correspondence to Le Corbusier

(Fondation Le Corbusier).

27. J. Drew, ‘Living: Sector 22’, Marg, 15,1 (1961), p. 23.

28. Ibid., pp. 22–25 for more information on Drew’s

design strategy.

29. The Sector was designed to house 20,000 inhabitants

and had exceeded that level by 1991: see G. Krishan,

Inner Spaces — Outer Spaces of a planned city

(Chandigarh, Chandigarh Perspectives, 1999), map 7.

30. Each road within Chandigarh is given a reference from

V1 through to V7 (and eventually a V8), indicating the

speed of traffic and hierarchy of road width with V1

being the fastest through to V7 the smaller, ped-

estrian-friendly sector roads.

31. H. Schmetzer, and P. I. Wakely, ‘Chandigarh Twenty

years later’, Architectural Design, 44 (1974), p. 356.

32. J. Drew, ‘Living: Sector 22’, op. cit., p. 22.

33. S. K. Gupta, ‘Chandigarh: A study of sociological

issues and urban development in India’, Architectural

Design, 44 (1974), p. 363.

34. E. M. Fry, ‘Problems of Chandigarh Architecture’, Marg

15,1 (1961), p. 20.

35. E. M. Fry, Art in a Machine Age: A critique of contem-

porary life through the medium of architecture by

Maxwell Fry (London, Methuen, 1969), p. 137.

36. E. M. Fry, Autobiographical Sketches (London, Elek

Books, 1975), p. 141.

37. MARS is an acronym for Modern Architecture Re-

Search, a British version and ‘branch’ of the CIAM.

38. E. M. Fry, Autobiographical Sketches, op. cit., p. 141.

39. E. M. Fry, ‘Problems of Chandigarh Architecture’,

op. cit., p. 21.

40. J. Sharples, A. Powers, et al., Charles Reilly and the

Liverpool School of Architecture, 1904–33 (Liverpool,

Liverpool University Press, 1996).

41. In Liverpool, however, he did build with exposed

concrete, but with an additional pigment added,

at the Liverpool Veterinary School, University of

Liverpool.

42. D. Lasdun, ‘Impact’, in, J. Sagar, Celebrating Chandi-

garh (Chandigarh, Chandigarh Perspectives, 2002).

43. See R. Dwyer and D. Patel, Cinema India: The visual

Culture of Hindi Film (London, Reaktion Books, 2002).

44. See B. Dawson, Street Graphics India (London, Thames

and Hudson, 1999) for a selection of India’s advertising

hoardings and advertisements.

45. Fry would have seen other early machismo cinemas in

his native Liverpool, such as the Futurist, built in 1912

(and named the Futurist in 1920).

46. See J. Drew, ‘Living: Sector 22’, op. cit., pp. 22–25.

47. D. Lasdun, ‘Impact’, op. cit., p. 46.

48. Land was sold for private development in addition

to public building work, with, initially at least, strict

aesthetic controls and architect-designed plans. See

G. Krishan, Inner Spaces – Outer Spaces of a

planned city, op cit., Map 10.

49. N. Evenson, The Indian Metropolis: A view toward the

West (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1989).

50. N. Temple and S. Bandyopadhyay, ‘Contemplating the

Unfinished: Architectural Drawing and the Fabricated

Ruin’, in, M. Frascari et al., eds, From Models to

Drawings: Imagination and Representation in Archi-

tecture (London, Taylor & Francis/Routledge, 2007),

pp. 109–119.

51. Between 1951, when the city was established, and the

1961 Census, the population had grown to almost

120,000 people and this would more than double in

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Edwin Maxwell Fry


the following ten years to 1971. (See http://

chandigarh.gov.in/ and Indian Census information.)

52. Sector-21, for example, is now saturated by mechanics

and not general community shops, resulting in the

inhabitants having to travel further for other goods

and services.

53. K. Joshi, Documenting Chandigarh (Ahmedabad,

Mapin, 1999) and S. Bahga and S. Bahga, Le Corbusier

and Pierre Jeanneret: Footprints on the sand of Indian

Architecture, op. cit.

54. See ‘Remembering Pierre Jeanneret’, AþD, 23, 1

(2006), pp. 24–34; Conference held in the Chandi-

garh School of Architecture, organised with the

Swiss Embassy, 20th November, 2005.

55. P. Jeanneret, (1961). ‘Aesthetic: Reflection on Beauty

of Line, Shape and Form’, Marg, 15 (1961), p. 57.

56. S. Bahga and S. Bahga, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jean-

neret: Footprints on the sand of Indian Architecture,

op cit., p. 33.

57. Fatephur Sikri was constructed in 1569–1580 by the

Mughal Emperor, Akbar. It was abandoned, legend

has it, due to an insufficient supply of water. See

A. Petrucciolo and T. Dix, Fatephur Sikri (Berlin, Ernst

& Sohn, 1992).

58. E. M. Fry, Art in a Machine Age, op. cit., p. 41.

59. Le Corbusier, Creation is a Patient Search (New York,

Frederick A. Praeger, 1960).

60. R. Kalia, Chandigarh: the making of an Indian City,

op. cit., p. 73.

61. E. M. Fry, Art in a Machine Age, op. cit., p. 8.

62. Ibid.

63. J. Drew, ‘Living: Sector 22’, op. cit., p. 22.

64. D. Lasdun, ‘Impact’, op. cit., p. 46.

65. M. Sarin, Planning and the Urban Poor, op. cit.,

p. 403.

66. E. M. Fry, ‘Le Corbusier at Chandigarh’, op. cit., p. 361.

67. The complex roof form of the Bhavan is also illustrative

of an evolving Modernism internationally. Le Corbu-

sier’s work at the Philips Pavilion as well Ronchamp

also demonstrates a move towards expressive, engin-

eered formalism over rationalised functionalism.

68. Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier’s Sketchbooks Vol1 and

Vol2 (London, Thames and Hudson, 1981–2; in associ-

ation with Fondation Le Corbusier).

69. T. Benton, ‘Modernism and Nature’, in, C. Wilk, Mod-

ernism: Designing a New World (London, V&A Publi-

cations, 2006).

70. Le Corbusier also collected, photographed and drew

objects such as bones, twigs, rocks and fossils that

he called objets a reaction poetique.

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http://chandigarh.gov.in/



authorship and modernity in chandigarh: the ghandi bhavan and the kiran cinema designed by pierre...

Documents

authorship of chandigarh

bypierre jeanneret

modernityin chandigarh

cinema hall

particulartwo buildings

prominent buildings

edwin maxwell fry therewas

kiran cinema