Chandigarh: India's city of the future
How the modernist architect Le Corbusier designed a city for newly-independent India
Witness History · BBC World Service
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Show Notes
After the trauma of Partition in 1947, India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru persuaded the maverick Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier, to build a new capital city for the province of Punjab. He hoped the project would symbolise a newly-independent, forward-looking India. Le Corbusier had revolutionised architecture and urban planning in the first half of the twentieth century. He was loved and hated in equal measure for his modernist approach, favouring flat roofs, glass walls and concrete. In 2016, Claire Bowes spoke to Sumit Kaur, former Chief Architect and lifelong resident of Chandigarh, about the legacy left by Le Corbusier.
(Photo: The Chandigarh Legislative Assembly building. 1999. Credit: John Macdougall/AFP)