2. Building Chandigarh: Assembling the Capital Project Team

In this episode we will talk about how the Chandigarh Capital Project team was selected. When did Corbusier and Jeanneret enter the picture and how was the rest of the team assembled? Who were the people displaced by Chandigarh and where did the labourers involved in the city's construction come from? We will also discuss the team's heirarchy and how the work was divided amongst them.

 

TIMESTAMPS:

 

1:07 - How and when did Le Corbusier become a part of the team?

 

3:23 - Was the idea of a competition ever floated to select the architects?

 

5:03 - How did Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry enter the project, following their African experience?

 

7:34 - Corbusier’s terms and conditions for joining the Chandigarh project

 

8:36 - The deal: Jeanneret to be in Chandigarh on behalf of Corbusier

 

12:24 - Corbusier’s preference to work from home

 

14:55 - CIAM’s role in globalising modernist architecture

 

17:46 - The false East-West dichotomy in Chandigarh’s discourse

 

19:51 - Criteria for selecting the younger architects

 

22:58 - Chandimandir rest house office as described by Mulk Raj Anand; how Corbusier ‘shrunk’ the Mayer plan.

 

27:30 - Land surveying and road laying by the engineers before shifting the office to Chandigarh

 

28:33 - The first building in Chandigarh - Capital Project Office in Nagla (Sector-19)

 

28:53 - The first houses came up in sector 22 to house the architects and engineers

 

30:28 - Labourers showed up in Chandigarh… from where? Were they trained on-site?

 

31:11 - The untold stories of the people and villages displaced to make way for Chandigarh

 

35:26 - The first ‘inhabitants’ of Chandigarh

 

36:17 - Corbusier fascinated by Indians carrying their beds on their heads!

 

37:00 - Jeanneret’s design for the Sector-19  Planners’ Office

 

38:46 - How the junior architects joined the team

 

39:44 - How was the work divided amongst the architects?

 

41:51 - The order of constructing the institutional buildings

 

42:57 - The conflict between white painted plaster and exposed bricks