Intimacy
and Monumentality in Chandigarh, North India:
Le Corbusier's Capitol Complex and Nek Chand Saini's Rock Garden
CHANDIGARH’S LE CORBUSIER: THE STRUGGLE FOR MODERNITY IN POSTCOLONIAL
INDIA, by Vikramaditya Prakash. Seattle: University of Washington Press,
2002, 179pp., $35.00 cloth.
The seventh century poet and philosopher Dharmakirti wrote of the path
we each must make:
No one behind, no
one ahead,
The path the ancients cleared has closed.
And the other path, everyone's path,
easy and wide, goes nowhere.
I am alone and find my way.
The image in Figure 1 shows the bottom of a concrete ramp that angles back
upon itself as it connects two levels of the government complex in Chandigarh
and ends in a grassy hillside that has several dirt paths cutting across
it. The concrete ramp begins just to the left of Le Corbusier's Assembly
Hall (Figure 2). What I hope is evident from just two images is the contrast
between the curving, unplanned path that pedestrians have made as they leave
the bottom of the ramp, and the axial, monumental path implicit in the organization
of the large concrete plaza in front of the Assembly Hall. One is informal
and intimate because of the many footprints that have worn away the grass;
the other is formal and monumental in its carefully controlled framing of
a sculptural presence. They are two very different paths, offering different
rewards as we wander upon them.
Sharon Irish
School of Architecture
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
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