WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
WHAT WE LEARNT FROM
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WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
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WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
CHARLES CORREA Charles Correa is an architect, planner and activist. He studied architecture at the University of Michigan and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology after which he established a private practice in Bombay in 1958. His work in India shows a careful development, understanding and adaptation of Modernism to a non-western culture. His early works attempt to explore a local vernacular within a modern environment. His landuse planning and community projects continually try to go beyond typical solutions to third world problems. The following article is based on the talk Charles Correa gave at the conference ‘Chandigarh Revisited’ which was held to mark the 50th anniversary of the city.
WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
Introduction
Some fifty years ago, when Chandigarh was under construction, Indian architects were often asked why we had not objected to Nehru appointing a “foreigner� (i.e. Corbusier), to create the city. The question astonished me. I knew the Government of India could so easily have selected some large commercial practice for this assignment. What incredible good fortune that they had chosen him instead! India was indeed lucky to get Corb. Years later, when I visited places like Dubai, I realised that the converse was also true: Corb was very lucky to get India! For here in India, he dealt with people who understood that architecture could change your life - an attitude that is fundamental to its creation. It is never a question of the size of the budget - but of something else, beyond finance. This is the essence of what we learned from Chandigarh - and why a poor country like Bangladesh can commission a masterwork from Louis Kahn.
WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
I
For me personally, it all started in the 1950’s, when I was a student of architecture, and a tiny sketch of the proposed Hight Court was published in one of the architectural journals. From this, one could form a general idea of the parti : four boxes for the judge’s courtrooms, and a fifth double-height box for the Chief Justice’s Court. The concept seemed fairly comprehensible - but it did not prepare me in any way for what I saw when I actually got there. The huge parasol roof, the giant ramp crossing back and forth, and the most stunning tour-de-force of all: the great front wall of the courts, rising up in a huge sweep, like a hovering tidal wave about to crash over you. Apart from everything else, how on earth did Corb conjure up this wall? “Genius in Art” said Cocteau, “consists in knowing how to take risks. When all your friends tell you: ‘Stop, it’s perfect’ - that’s when the true artist begins”.
Architecture is not a queue in which we all have to line up, with perhaps the Americans ahead, or the Chinese behind. No, each of us has the opportunity to be on the cutting edge of where we live.
With Chandigarh, suddenly India was centre-stage on the world scene. Architects from everywhere came to visit Corb’s buildings - and were profoundly influenced by the impact. So, when you got back to your own office, you wanted to re-design all your projects in exposed concrete - great sculpted shapes, cast in situ, using hand-made form work. Paul Rudolph in America, Kenzo Tange in Japan, the New Brutalists in Britain, all wanted to use a construction technology which was extremely esoteric and expensive in the United States and Europe - and yet for us here in India was a perfectly legitimate and economical way to build. This was adrenaline indeed! For by building here in our own country, we got the extraordinary opportunity to be at the cutting-edge of where it was all happening. This launched contemporary Indian architecture on a trajectory that is fundamentally different from the kind of Disneyland mode (golden domes in the sunset) that many architects, even very good ones, seem to slip into when they design a building in, say, Saudi Arabia. In India, we have the confidence to know that a serious piece of architecture can be created right here in this region – and that it is up to us to dig in and find it. In fact, if you think about it, all great architecture, from the Oak Park Houses of Frank Lloyd Wright to the temples of Kyoto, is – in that sense - regional. The buildings speak to us powerfully and eloquently of their time and place - that is how they become Universal. Those Wright houses in Chicago’s suburbs could not have been built in London, or in Delhi. Like Chartres and Fatehpur-Sikri, they are rooted in the soil on which they stand. And the corollary of this: Architecture is not a queue in which we all have to line up, with perhaps the Americans ahead, or the Chinese behind. No, each of us has the opportunity to be on the cutting edge of where we live. No one else can do that. It’s up to us to understand that opportunity, and not regard ourselves as second-hand re-runs of events that have already been staged elsewhere - or worse yet, see ourselves as part of a regional theme-park.
WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
II
Corbusier’s work was truly magnificent. Using concrete with extraordinary power and flexibility, he had developed an architectural language that influenced architects not just here in India, but all over the globe. And yet, of all the lessons we learnt from him, this was perhaps the most unnecessary - and dangerous - one of all. In fact, his language was so compelling, it takes one many years to climb out of that box - and does one ever really get completely out? Yet the very process of borrowing his language was invaluable. It allowed you to experience, even if only vicariously, the expressionistic power - the decibel level so to speak - of great architecture. Later, while struggling with your own work, it was a benchmark helping you to realise how far you still had to travel. Another crucial lesson we learnt from Corbusier was his attitude to the commissions he received. Now Corb might have been quite a different kind of person at the start of his career - as witness the obsequious flattery he showered on potential patrons, (“O, ye Captains of Industry”, and so forth), all just thinly disguised pleas for larger commissions. But by the time he came to India, ye Captains of Industry had all failed to turn up. (What if the shameless carpet-bagging of today’s Shanghai had taken place back in the 1920’s, would Corbusier - at least, the one we know - have survived?) No luckily for Corb, and for Wright and the early Mies, those large commissions just never materialised. And so all that energy, all those ideas, became even more intense, more rigourous, more potent. This gradually coalesced into the stance, so perceptively described by Charles Jencks in Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture: ‘No one is ever going to understand me, but I shall press on, regardless’. Melodramatic perhaps - but for young Indian architects just starting out practice, it engendered exactly the kind of courage needed to stiffen one’s spine - and block out any danger of selling out to the big battalions. This attitude of Corbusier was reinforced by his rare understanding of the consecutive commissions that make up one’s professional life. For unlike the poet and the painter, the architect is not really free to choose the problems he tackles. And once he embarks on the process, he can seldom back out of the project. The artist is different - if he does not like the painting he is working on, he just turns it to face the wall, and starts on another canvas, perhaps on quite a different subject. But for us, to start a project is to become part of a socio-economic process one cannot halt - for better or worse, we are riding the tiger. Which is why Corb’s work is so amazing. Each project in those eight volumes of the Oeuvre Complet is like a consecutive step in a great broken-field run - those amazing feats in football and hockey, where someone takes the ball down the entire length of the field to score. You realise perfectly well that the whole feat is ad libbed - and yet when you see that goal again in a slow-motion replay, you are convinced that at every moment the footballer knew precisely what his next step would be.
Now Corb might have been quite a different kind of person at the start of his career - as witness the obsequious flattery he showered on potential patrons, (“O, ye Captains of Industry”, and so forth), all just thinly disguised pleas for larger commissions.
WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
Once he embarks on the process, he can seldom back out of the project. The artist is different - if he does not like the painting he is working on, he just turns it to face the wall, and starts on another canvas, perhaps on quite a different subject.
Corb could make that touchdown because each step he took was determined not by the size of the commission, but by its relevance to his overall goal. Thus La Tourette is just a small hostel for some monks, located many kilometres outside Lyons - which itself is only a provincial city. Yet the world beat a path to its door. So also, Ronchamp - a minuscule chapel, in a quite inaccessible location. That was indeed another great lesson indeed for us in India: Great architecture has nothing to do with the size of the project. Today, when the biggest names in the profession are battling for the largest commissions, it must be quite difficult for students to distinguish quality from quantity - a fundamental principle that even Ayn Rand messed up in the final scenes of The Fountainhead.
III
Edwin Lutyens’ contract for the design of New Delhi in the 1920’s, specified that he spend six months of every year in India. Thus for extended periods of time, Lutyens perforce had in-depth exposure to the building materials, the climate, and the culture of this country. (Unfortunately his contact with the local population appears to have been minimal though there was a certain amount of dialogue with British architects working in India, which supposedly compelled him to examine more closely local craftsmanship and traditions). For the design and building of Chandigarh, the Government decided to take this process further. The creation of Chandigarh would involve young Indian architects, planners and engineers, so that the experiment becomes a catalyst, a watershed, helping to define the ethos of the new nation. So Corbusier came to India twice a year, once in summer and once in winter, for visits that lasted a month at a time - this In addition to his colleagues Jeanneret, Fry and Drew, working on full-time government contracts for a period of several years. This arrangement created a special culture in Chandigarh, one in which the Indian architects and engineers could learn a great deal from these foreign colleagues - and the other way round as well! The visitors could profit from the kind of feedback that only local experience and insight can provide. It is unfortunate that our profession today works under very different conditions. Architects are seemingly forever hopping on to airlines, designing a new building almost every time the plane lands. Exposure to the local culture is minimal - something of little relevance. Our prototype seems to have become the concert pianist - Rubinstein! - flying around the world, playing brilliantly the same Chopin programme, one night in the jungles of Manaus, the next in London, the third in Tokyo. The concert pianist can of course do this, for his music is a moveable feast. But architecture?
WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
Of course we should feel free to build anywhere we choose – but, surely it must be in a place that speaks to you. Like Corbusier’s journey to Brazil - a visit, back in the 1930’s, that really brought him to life! And the same was also true of his interface with India. To design for a society you understand - and respond to - is essential to creating architecture of any value. This is not a moral proposition, but a pragmatic one. If you design quickly and off the top of your head (and the more gifted you are, the easier it is to do), you do not get any nourishment from the process. The tragedy of our profession today is that so many of the best and brightest are going around the globe, doing just that - and in the process, destroying their own talent. In this connection I was intrigued to learn that Matisse, whose paintings depicted so many exotic locales, could actually put brush to canvas in only three places: Paris, Nice, and Morocco. Perhaps it was the special quality of light they possessed – but it could also have been something more compulsive than that. Like birds that fly thousands of miles every winter form Siberia to sojourn in the marshes around Agra, perhaps Matisse was programmed to paint that way. Artists understand this - because their art is rooted in their sensibilities. And so they refuse to act against their instincts - understanding intuitively that this would destroy them. But architects feel we can have our cake - and eat it too.
IV
And now we come to a different subject: the planning of the city of Chandigarh itself - and here we must perforce change gears. For the city-planning theories that Corbusier brought to the task were woefully inadequate – in fact, really quite irrelevant - to the urban issues he had to address here in India. Perhaps, as Sibyl Moholy-Nagy has said, Corb was not an authentic city-planner, but really an architect manqué The incredible success of his early work in the late 1920’s had made him the hero of architects all over the world. The invitations poured in - from exotic places like Brazil, Colombia, Algeria. Corb would travel to these countries and deliver a lecture to great acclaim – followed afterwards by dinner with the mayor and the local VIPs. Unfortunately these forays did not usually end up with any new architectural commissions. Instead, what Corb produced, presumably for the mayor’s benefit, was a Master Plan for the city – or at least a conceptual plan, often drawn on the back of the menu card, or on a napkin. By the end of the 30‘s, he was indeed frustrated. Lacking clients for his architecture, he re-invented himself as a planner of cities. Easily said - but how is it done? A few years ago I came across a very revealing incident (perhaps in one of Corb’s journals?) that occurs at the opening of the architectural
The creation of Chandigarh would involve young Indian architects, planners and engineers, so that the experiment becomes a catalyst, a watershed, helping to define the ethos of the new nation.
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WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
exhibition in Paris, celebrating the completion of the Unite at Marseilles. The CIAM architects are all milling around, lavish in their praise. But what astounds Corbusier is the sudden appearance of Picasso! Now although Corb saw himself primarily as a painter, no one of this stature had ever deigned to visit one of his painting exhibitions. So he goes up to Picasso and they start this extraordinary conversation. Picasso says: “I’ve always wanted to design a building – tell me, is it very difficult?” To which Corbusier replies: ”No! It’s easy! Come to my atelier tomorrow and I will show you how”. I love that scene - two world-class self-taught medicine-men, knowing they could do it all. (Alas, says Corbusier, Picasso never showed up at the atelier). But Corb’s confidence is understandable. After all, hadn’t he taught himself architecture – and become the most celebrated and influential architect of the century? And rightly so - for his natural gifts for architecture were so sensational, that he understood effortlessly what had to be done. That is to say, he was great sculptor who understood that architecture is sculpture, but with the gestures of human occupation as an integral part of the abstraction. This is what we see in the work of Alvaar Alto, or Frank Lloyd Wright. This is what separates the architect from the sculptor and the graphic artist. The gestures of human occupation - giving scale, and life, to the abstraction.
To design for a society you understand - and respond to - is essential to creating architecture of any value. This is not a moral proposition, but a pragmatic one.
Unfortunately Corb did not possess the same God-given gifts when it came to city planning - as perhaps he himself realised. So when Chandigarh comes along, he reverts back to what he understands best: Architecture! For the next few years, he devotes himself to the Capitol complex (always sketched against the foothills of the Himalayas, so that his life comes full cycle back to the paradigm of the Parthenon). The rest of the city he leaves to lesser mortals, viz. Jeanneret, Fry and Drew. How else does one explain why the ridiculously low densities that prevail - contrary to all Corb’s urbanistic theories? Some believe he was overpowered by the Indian bureaucrats who wanted their lawns and their bungalows. (Corbusier overpowered?) And the lowdensities are further exacerbated by the very large area of each sector – 800m by 1200m. It is impossible to walk across these sectors – especially in the hot sun. Why did Corb do this? In his planning projects prior to Chandigarh, he had usually made the sectors 400m by 400m. Perhaps someone had told him that for a fast road, traffic lights at every 400m is too short a distance? But having clover leafs at every 800m is even more insane. And then again, organizing these low-density sectors in a grid makes any public transport impossible - since these are linear by definition, and require a corridor of high-density demand to be economically viable. (Perhaps in Paris, Corb rode around in taxis?) When you look at the great iconic drawing of the Master Plan of Chandigarh that adorned so many architectural and planning offices during that period, you don’t sense any of this. Because you get the scale wrong! Each sector looks like a delightful
WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
miniature world, brilliantly interconnected with the rest of the tapestry - east-west through the shopping streets, and north-south though the generous greens. Nothing could be further from the truth. Each sector is an isolated world, cut off from its neighbours on all four sides by the V3 roads, and by the high brick walls that run along its periphery. The result is a city of very separate rooms, lacking the interaction - and the synergy – that we love about cities.
V
Almost 50 years ago, the urban economist Ved Prakash analysing land-use in Chandigarh, demonstrated that the real cross-subsidy in Chandigarh is the poor subsidising the rich! The bungalows of the judges, ministers, and other “high government officials” are located on humungous chunks of prime land. And though these sites are anywhere from 10 to 100 times the size of those in more humble sectors, they pay exactly the same unit rates for all the various services (water, electricity, telephone, etc) - although it costs the city a fraction of the price to deliver these services to a sector with a density of 1000 persons per hectare, than it does to one with just 10. And so, right from the start, the cost of housing and basic urban services climbed out of the reach of the poor. Furthermore, as Madhu Sarin reminds us, although squatter colonies started with the arrival of the first construction workers, the Master Plan never concerned itself with the kind of dehumanised lives they were leading. No obviously if Chandigarh was just the city itself, nobody would ever have bothered to go there. It is the buildings of Corbusier that attracted - and continue to attract - architects from all over the world. And rightly so. Although more than 50 years of imitation should have irrevocably de-valued its architecture, a visit to the Capitol complex is still a stunning experience. For in contrast to the carefully finished concrete of today, the brutal surfaces generate the wallop of the hand-held camera of cinema verite. The three buildings are a revelation. The construction by the State PWD is shoddy, the maintenance is terrible but the architecture triumphs! This is why it is tragic indeed that the fourth component in this complex, the Governor’s Palace, was never built. It is really the jewel of the whole composition - an expressionistic construct of incredible power and vitality. For while it is possible to design a large house for a VIP, how do you conceive an abode whose very shape and form proclaim: I am a Governor’s Palace! This was the genius, of Corbusier – to know how to project architecture at that decibel level, with great fluency and rigour. At the ‘Revisiting Chandigarh’ conference of 2000, we managed to construct a full-scale mock-up in cloth and bamboo of the main facade. It was a revelation - a vivid demonstration of the pivotal
For the cityplanning theories that Corbusier brought to the task were woefully inadequate – in fact, really quite irrelevant - to the urban issues he had to address here in India.
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WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
Picasso says: “I’ve always wanted to design a building – tell me, is it very difficult?” To which Corbusier replies: ”No! It’s easy! Come to my atelier tomorrow and I will show you how”.
role that the Governor’s Palace was meant to play in the composition of the Capitol Complex, setting up the main cross-axis that addresses the city itself - the only building of the four to do so. It also was frustrating to see how affordable its construction would be - it is no bigger than the average cinema hall (of which scores are being built every year, all over India). Why then does it not get built? Because the truth is that the people of Chandigarh, especially the elite, do not like Corb’s architecture. In fact, they hate the rough concrete, the raw ambience. They are only too happy to find all three buildings have been safely locked away behind barbed wire fencing, totally cut-off from the city. What these elite, (i.e. those living just south of the Capitol complex from Sectors 2 through 19), love about Chandigarh – at least their half of it – is their own life-style. Large bungalows with extensive lawns, using city water at highly subsidised rates, and so forth. And they have no hesitation in invoking Corbusier’s name as a talisman to help protect themselves from any move to bring some equity to the city. As long as we can pre-empt the city’s water supply for our own gardens and lawns, why not pay obeisance to the Great Man? What they (and much of our urban elite) really want to do, of course is continue the life-style that the British created for themselves in their own cantonments - areas from which Indians were barred (except for a few army officers). Since we weren’t allowed to live there during the British Raj, ever since Independence in 1947, our new planned cities and housing lay-outs are really just our own versions of the British cantonment. Individual houses standing on green lawns, nobody walking on the roads, the only person in sight a servant returning from the bazaar. So we come to the ultimate irony: despite indifference (and often, open hostility) to Curb’s architecture and ideas, for most of north India’s elite the city of Chandigarh has come to symbolise The Good Life. And Corbusier gets credit – and gratitude - for it! Of no concern is the fact that the city pays little heed to the urban theories that Corb himself propounded as dogma. Nor, on the other hand, is any attention paid to the indigenous typologies that have existed for centuries in our towns and cities, like the havelis - multi-storied dwellings built around courtyards, in patterns which make wonderful sense not only socially and culturally, but also in terms of climate and coherent urban form. It was precisely these patterns that the British identified with the natives - and rejected so vehemently. Which is why they set up their
WHAT WE LEARNT FROM CHANDIGARH CHARLES CORREA
Cantonments. Pathetic indeed that we should espouse so enthusiastically what the rulers left behind. One cannot help but be reminded of George Orwell’s matchless fable, “Animal Farm”. As you will recall, the animals in the story are all terrified of the Farmer, who lives in a big house, from which he exercises complete control over them. So one day they decide, with great trepidation, to drive him out of the farm and burn his house down. Surprisingly, by the end of the very first chapter itself, the Farmer turns tail and bolts. The animals are overjoyed - in fact, are so deliriously happy celebrating, that they become too tired to burn down his house that night. So they decide to postpone it till the next morning. The following day when they get up, other events take place, and they postpone the destruction again - until a few days later, some of the animals (I believe it is the pigs) seize occupation of the Farmer’s house and start controlling all the others. The other animals are confused and horrified. But every time a horse neighs or donkey brays in protest, the wily pigs (dancing a jig), flash a picture of the Farmer’s House, and the poor animal is reduced to trembling submission. The new regime is being validated by the imagery of the old. Now, when Edwin Lutyens was commissioned to design New Delhi, he was specifically instructed to create an architecture which would proclaim to the native population the power and glory of the British Empire. In fact, Lutyens refused to acknowledge the possible relevance of any indigenous architecture, including the masterpieces built by the Mughal emperors - which he described as “the work of monkeys”. So after our struggle for Independence was over and the British had finally left, what did we do? We immediately occupied Lutyen’s buildings, i.e. moved right into the Farmer’s House - and now we use its imagery to validate our right to rule. And worse than that, every time a new building is to be constructed in New Delhi, edicts are issued that it should comply with the “Lutyens-Baker style of architecture” - whatever that means. In other words, even when we get the chance to build anew, we want to extend the Farmer’s House. Now regardless of what you might like about Chandigarh, or what you might abhor, one thing is incontrovertible: it is NOT the Farmer’s House. On the contrary, Corbusier’s work opened a door into another landscape. He showed us that we were free to invent our own future. Not by slavishly following his language - but, through his example, finding the courage to discover our own voices.
if Chandigarh was just the city itself, nobody would ever have bothered to go there. It is the buildings of Corbusier that attracted - and continue to attract architects from all over the world.
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I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies. - Le Corbusier
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