BOOK REVIEW | Good Reads
An architect & a City!
C
handigarh is known to be one of the most well-planned cities of independent of India. And, also the first planned city. Soon after India got freed from British rule, the then Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru wanted a new capital for Punjab state, as its original capital ( Lahore) had gone to Pakistan. Those who have visited Chandigarh, love it’s open expanse, clinically divided residential sectors, it’s large open green areas, city center and museum complex, to just name a few. Very few cities in India, or in the world, are famously known with their architects. After Delhi (Edwin Lutyens), it is Chandigarh which is instantly known for its creator - Frenchman Le Corbusier ( a pseudonym) the world renowned urbanist and planner. This little book, though titled ‘Architectural Guide’, is actually a precise introduction of the beautiful city as seen by the author who is a well known architect in his own stride. I have always believed Chandigarh was the first ‘Smart City’ that was built much before such a concept was
introduced anywhere. The best part of the book is that it has included pictures of some of the best public buildings of the city along with their detailed drawings and small perspective plans to provide readers with much more insights of the particular structure. Normally what happens in our cities that the ordinary citizens, or even students of architecture do not much bother about important buildings and the men who conceived the same. In a way, they remain aloof from their own city and its history. Such a book, thus, enlightens them and virtually opens up their third eye that should notice the smaller details of cement-brick-mortar structures which they see daily while going out to offices or market places or to a friend’s house. In this way, Bloomsbury Publishers have done a good job of launching a series of ‘Indian Architectural Travel Guides’ focusing on cities in the manner which Prakash has written. Of course, I have so far been able to lay hand on only this book. They have brought out similar books on Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Varanasi, Delhi and Old Goa. So the author tells us the curious story of how Corbusier came into the
Book Chandigarh Author Vikramaditya Prakash Publishers Bloomsbury, India Pages 244 Price `599/-
44 August 2020 | www.urbanupdate.in
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Abhilash Khandekar Senior Journalist
picture at the last moment to design the city. He was not the first choice of Punjab Government officials. Upon reading initial pages of this book, the reader gets to know how fast official decisions used to be taken in those days by bureaucrats even in hunting foreign architects. The draft agenda to create the city as “Garden City”--christened ‘ Chandigarh’ because of a temple close by--was prepared by AL Fletcher, Kerala cadre Indian Civil Services Officer on special duty to the Punjab Government. Based on his readings of the post-war English New Towns around London and the writings of Ebenezer Howard and Lewis Mumford, Fletcher proposed that the new capital should be a small administrative town nestled in a green landscape. P N Thapar ( also ICS) as the chief administrator and P L Verma, as the chief engineer, were entrusted with the task of realising this vision in 1949. Due to some differences among them, Fletcher left the project but Verma and Thapar remained devoted to the cause of Chandigarh to the very end of their lives. The author tells us about American planner Albert Mayer who was working with Nehru in Uttar Pradesh on the task of creating ‘Modern Villages’. “His background in the United States, however, was as a Garden City-influenced town planner which was of course also the profile that had been developed for the new city of Chandigarh by AL Fletcher. And so naturally, Nehru asked Mayer to prepare master plan for Chandigarh.” Although, Mayer was essentially obsessed with his rural development schemes at this time, he accepted the Chandigarh job. The prestige associated with the project would have been an attraction, in particularly for the New
