The multi-talented Frenchman Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, better known as le Corbusier was an urban planner, architect, painter, sculptor and writer. Born in 1887 in Switzerland, the famed architect became a trendsetter for modern and urban architecture.
The Swiss architect played a significant role in conceiving Chandigarh’s present urban and planned architecture.
Besides determining Chandigarh’s urban form, architect le Corbusier is also credited for aesthetically designing Capitol Complex, the raison-d’etre for this city and several other architectural masterpieces here.
Corbusier’s Capitol Complex comprises of four ‘Edifices’ – legislative Assembly, Secretariat, High Court and Governor’s Palace. The built ‘Edifices’ — the High Court, the legislative Assembly, and the Secretariat — represent the three major functions of democracy and are considered as Corbusier’s most mature creations, each of these is a masterpiece in itself, representing the adaptation of European modernism. The fourth ‘Edifice’, originally the Governor’s Palace, but later replaced by the futuristic ‘Museum of Knowledge’, is yet to be realised.
The most significant aspect of the layout however is the facilitation of uninterrupted pedestrian linkages and green areas throughout the Capitol Complex.
In 1950, India’s Prime Minister Jawharlal Nehru had invited Corbusier to India to design his dream city of Chandigarh. Beginning his work in 1951, he continued to be associated with the city as the principal ‘architectural and planning advisor’ till his death in 1965.
Chandigarh is a well-ordered matrix of Corbusier’s designing of modern architecture. The city defines the well knit concept of protected green belts, hierarchical classification of roads (V1 to V7), neighbourhood units ‘Sectors’ and architectural masterworks of Corbusier.