“On the manual labor of men, women, and children ‘as innumerable as ants’ with the leisurely aid of miniature donkeys and scorning the impatient hustle of machinery, the city is slowly taking form. The same old crazy scaffolding bamboo, tied with bits of strings, astonishingly gives birth to structures of sublime grace and impressive solidity.” (In: Von Moos 2010)
After the partition, around 30,000 construction workers built Chandigarh as Punjab’s new capital, with around 5,000 working on the construction site at a time. Half of them were children and women. Though Chandigarh was meant to represent the modern city of the age of industrialization, it was built by hand; manpower cost less than machine power, it included women-power, child-power, and donkey-power. (Chowdhury, 1963) Many photographs of Chandigarh traveled around the world. The image of the ‘working woman’ became quite popular in the context of Chandigarh, even more so recently when Ernst Scheidegger’s photographs from 1956 were published. Construction sites in general were very popular for the idea of the future and modernity, as “the very idea of ‘reconstruction’ called forth the hopes of architectural modernity. Where the war had hit, however, utopian city concepts had little chance of being enacted anywhere immediately after 1945 (...).” (Von Moos 2010:55)
Manual modes of production and their aesthetic became significant for Chandigarh. According to Aditya Prakash, one of the architects in the Chandigarh team, and Vikramaditya Prakash, an architect and architectural critic, the status of building materials was improved in the construction of Chandigarh: “In Chandigarh, the innate expression of every building material was studied. As a consequence, brick, which was considered to be an unworthy material, was expressed ‘truthfully’ and became noble.” (Prakash 1999: 23) Le Corbusier took responsibility for the overall master plan of the city and the design of some of the major public buildings including the High Court, Assembly, Secretariat, the Museum and Art Gallery, School of Art, and the Lake Club. Most of the other housing was done by Le Corbusier’s cousin Pierre Jeanneret, and Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, along with a team of nine Indian architects: M.N. Sharma, A.R. Prabhawalkar, B.P. Mathur, Piloo Moody, Eulie Chowdhury, N.S. Lamba, Jeet Malhotra, J.S. Dethe, and Aditya Prakash. Bricks were used as the main building material to construct houses. Concrete was much too expensive and was only used in parts of the houses (for the frame) and the Capitol Complex.
“The cheapest material in Chandigarh is brick. It costs about Rs. 28/- per thousand. Concrete and stone cost three or four times as much. Glazing and wood work cost 7 times more per square foot of wall than the same area in brick. This fact has an immediate and visible effect on the architecture of Chandigarh. Brick is used not only as a bearing wall but also for parapets, balustrades, sun-breakers and even furniture. Sometimes, face-brick is used but often brick is plastered as this permits inferior grades to be utilised, thus reducing cost.” (Chowdhury 1961)
In 1954 regional practices were exhibited at the UN housing conference in New Delhi to study regional low-cost housing. But still, Chandigarh was meant to grow a middle class. Housing wasn’t provided for the construction workers. According to Madhu Sarin, the self-built houses became slums around 1959, when “the planners started thinking: they are going to come and spoil our beautiful plan because they are trying to squat on what is going to become valuable land.” (Sarin 1991)
Discourses and models of modern planning debates formed the outlines of Chandigarh: neighborhood unit, tropical architecture, houses for the masses, etc. As a result, Chandigarh constitutes an examination room where the transition and the continuity from colonial to postcolonial methodology is exemplified in architecture and planning. According to Arif Dirlik, the physical planning of architecture, urban, and rural regions is a colonial practice par excellence. Projects like Chandigarh, which can be seen in a colonial continuity of ‘experiment’ and ‘laboratory’, became part of ‘developing regimes’ in the era of decolonization and state and nation building. The colonial category of “civilization” turns into bio-political “development.” Institutionalization and bureaucratization constitute categories that need to be improved, modernized, and developed further. In the case of Chandigarh, the concept of the colonial laboratory is opposed to systems of education.
(MH)


Sources:
Chowdhury, U.E. (1961): "High Cost Housing and Interiors." In: MARG-Pathway. Chandigarh. Issue XV/1 (Reprint, 1998).
Dirlik, Arif (2007): "Architecture of Global Modernity, Colonialism and Places." In: Lee, Sang/ Baumeister, Ruth. 2007 : The Foreign and the Domestic in Architecture. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.
Drew, Jane B. (1963): "Indigenous Architecture: Architecture in the Tropics." In: Perspecta, Issue 8. 57-58
Mathur, Saloni (2011): "Charles and Ray Eames in India." In: Art Journal, Issue 70/1. 34-53
Prakash, Aditya/Vikramaditya (1999): Chandigarh. The City Beautiful. New Delh: Abi Prints & Publishing Co..
Sarin, Madhu (1982): Urban planning in the Third World: the Chandigarh experience. London: Mansell.
Sarin, Madhu (in Interview 1991) (1993): "Beyond the Margins of Planning, Interview with Madhu sarin, December 1991, Chandigarh." In: ANQ. Architecture and Natura quarterly: Chandigarh. Forty years after Le Corbusier.
Von Moos, Stanislaus (2010): Chandigarh 1956. Zürich: Scheidegger & Spiess.