However in India, there is a near total lack of green urban spaces of that scale. Yes we do have the largest “national park in an urban boundary” claim by way of Borivili National Park in Mumbai, but that’s hardly the center of Mumbai; and even that is being encroached up with drastic results.

Gautam Patel makes a fantastic case of the need for more green space and how the politicians manipulate this theme come election time.

In the run up to Mumbai’s municipal elections, of the many to-be-left-unfufilled promises made by political parties, two were common: less corruption and more “infrastructure”. The latter, in our peculiar notion of what makes a ‘world-class’ city, only means more roads, more bridges. No one promised to make our city more liveable. In my constituency, apart from the familiar talk-to-the-hand and offerings for lotus-eaters, there were many odd symbols for candidates: a sewing machine, an LPG cylinder and something that looked like a pasta machine cross-bred with a meat grinder. Not one had a tree or anything that looked like it.

In the last 20 or 30 years, we seem to have developed an odd view of what constitutes urban development: more grey concrete and fewer trees. Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore have all seen this. A 2008 report, based on RTI applications, showed that Mumbai had lost 25,000 trees to ‘development’ projects; and of those said to have been transplanted, no more than half a dozen survived. South Mumbai is a favoured target, as the wanton destruction of trees along Nepean Sea Road showed. As of May 2011, Mumbai is said to have only a little of 19 lakh trees left. In contrast, New York, to which we so like to compare ourselves, has an average of five trees per person despite having more high-rises than Mumbai, and it has, too, a plan to plant — and nurture — a million more (the 500,000th was planted in October 2011).

Continue reading “Murdering Trees, Killing Cities”.

Original article here.

Slums have been in perpetual state of persistence in political parlance and policy promises. From slum removal in seventies to slum-networking in 2000, there has been a paradigm shift in addressing slums in urban Indian context. By 2000, it was a realisation that formal systems – government or private, has failed in addressing affordable housing to nearly half of urban population. On the other end, individual initiatives by slum-dwellers have managed to find them basic shelters if not decent housing without any external help. What they have not been able to provide are collective infrastructure and what they do not have is legal tenure of land. The first deficiency makes them defined as slum with squalid conditions while the latter condition describe them as squatments through illegal ownership of land.

The UN defines slums as a building, a group of buildings or area characterised by overcrowding, deterioration, unhygienic conditions or any one of them endangering health, safety, or morals of its inhabitants or the community. This refers to squalid conditions of living and not the legality of land ownership. By this definition even sizeable part of old cities in India, like Shahjahanabad in Delhi or pols in Ahmedabad will get included in it, which are well-known holistic living environments.

What then is the hue and cry about slums in current times? How much of the debate today revolves around improving quality of housing versus freeing up of priceless land on which they locate? Slums of India, unlike those in Latin American cities, do not concentrate in suburbs. They often occupy pristine lands of the cities. Real estate appreciation due to city’s growth becomes their enemy. Gulbai Tekra, which started of as camp for construction workers, and domestic help living by the riverfront are such examples in our city. These settlements applied themselves on unwanted, innocent and perhaps inhabitable lands of the city. But as city developed, they became a part of urban agglomeration and caught attention of real estate hawks.

Housing shortages amounting to 24.7 million corresponds with about 40% of urban households. Almost 42.6 million or 15% of urban population live in slums. Ahmedabad has little below quarter (23%) of its population as slum-dwellers. In Mumbai, over 55% population live in slums. The irony is that this populace occupies only 8% of Mumbai’s total land. If half of the Mumbaikars manages to live in such a small area of land and solve their housing troubles themselves, do we still need to eye these lands for further economic equations? How about we grant these spaces to these dwellers? Security of tenure alone is good enough for people to invest their own resources and improve quality of housing. Studies indicate that even simply notifying slums receives defacto authorisation and that itself has encouraged very noticeable improvements. For example, compared to non-notified slums having two-third houses without toilets, notified ones are less than a third. Underground drainage, road and electricity are nearly double in notified slums, thereby improved quality of life and so on.

Authorising illegal constructions through penalty clause, condoning land grabs for parking spaces, building schools on open grounds or even putting up buildings on reclaimed natural resources are not a form of legalising and granting of city lands? Uprooting slums from their locale and rehabilitating them in far off, isolated places is unsuccessful as loss of social network, deprival of employment and economic base, mismatch between lifestyles and vertical building typologies, as well as severed transport links. Yet we continue to approach the same models over and over again. It is obvious that interest deep within is in freeing urban land for open market development rather than upgrading the slums. If we improve conditions of the slum in situ with infrastructure and amenities, these settlements would seize to be the squalid neighbourhoods as slums. They would emerge as affordable housing stock for millions through private sharing. They will not be a burden but rather a resource. Not a problem but a solution.

However Indian cities have a clear demarcation in terms of the urban aesthetics when looked at within the time frame of the last century.

The big four metros, all cities in existence for at least 400 years have an evolved sense of architecture and urban aesthetic that spans from the Mughal times to the British Raj. Each city got its own distinct version of style and look. However this sense of aesthetic took a nosedive post-Independence.

All of a sudden, for every great piece of architecture, there were 100 examples of very banal, characterless buildings. Entire sections of cities, or even entire small cities grew up with no sense of architectural character and style.

This anomaly, compounded with a complete lack of urban planning and vision, created a mish-mash of architectural style that is in most cases a visual nightmare. Things took a turn for the better in the early 90’s when the opening up of the markets brought transformation into India in all sectors. IT Parks, Techology campuses and the supporting housing, retail and commercial needs brought about an architectural boom that has been on a continuous steady rise over the last two decades.

However a total lack of a masterplan and vision for the entire city has created a new jigsaw of competing styles, materials, designs, that somehow don’t fit in all together.

Below is an article by an architect elaborating on the missed opportunity of enhanced infrastructure that would have brought about a disciplined design aesthetic in Indian cities.

What are your thoughts?

Making sense of aesthetics in Indian cities

Srinivas Murthy G, | Times of India, Hyderabad Edition

About three years ago I decided to make Hyderabad my home. I was living in Delhi, city of my birth and education, before moving to this city.

I have been designing projects in and around Hyderabad for the last decade and have been part of its growth story in many ways. It was a strange realisation that only after relocating myself here I started thinking about its existing as a living organism and not just as another destination for business purpose.

Two things that struck me most (or rather absence of them) and probably affect me in many ways are the so called cultural scene that one is so used to in Delhi and secondly, how the architectural sensibilities of people of this historic city changed due to the fast paced development. While the first one is more specific to this city given its strong historical and cultural background that it once boasted of, the second one is about the built environment of Hyderabad, though nothing unusual as many other cities have gone though the same fate during the same timeline. I will reserve the first one for another time and write about the second one first, as being an architect by profession, this moves me both in personal and professional spectrums.

During the last decade or two, many Indian cities have witnessed stupendous growth due to the IT boom abroad and also due to the new era of liberalised economy. Hyderabad’s growth has been watched very keenly and closely by other neighbouring big cities. The city is in many ways like Delhi, more particularly on architectural front. It has an equally important architectural heritage and does not stay too behind in display of wealth and affluence. It has its own South Delhi charms that you can feel while moving around in Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills with large villas and bungalows dotting the landscape.

Importance is given more to the size and grandeur than the aesthetics of architectural design. To borrow from Gautam Bhatia’s comments on architectural scene in Delhi, the Punjabi Baroque is replaced by a hugely Greek, Corinthian and Roman Renaissance styles and if this was not enough, completed it with riot of coloured facades and glass facades to add to fetish to show off.

This is so much different from how Bangalore and Pune responded during their growth years. While Bangalore is known for its small and well built designer homes, Pune has some of the earliest and finest examples of housing in multi-storied apartment type buildings. Architectural professional gained respectability very soon in these cities much to surprise of many even in Delhi and Mumbai. And now the so called newer parts of the city, which incidentally are not more than a decade and half old, still lack some of the basic facilities. No pedestrian safety and footpaths, no decent greenery and plantation, overcrowded and congested roads, no streetlights, and signage is something which one can only dream of, are regular features of these supposedly happening places.

Public utilities like bus shelter and drinking water for commuters, underpasses for pedestrians, drainage channels and communication and electrical services ducts, and the list of requirements appears to be never ending. And on the architectural front, there is a complete sense of chaos and absurdness of design elements. There is no architecture at all. They are all covered with huge and brightly coloured hoardings that make the skyline of the city and glaringly tell you that nobody cares for the aesthetical composition of the street.

It is the rich of the world, who with their huge budgets for advertising are responsible for such ghastly act of taking pleasantness out of our cities. I for one will be very eagerly waiting to see a hoarding on top of one of their spacious high rise villas designed by probably one of the best imported architects of the world.

I always wondered if we needed huge amounts of money or technological knowhow or just simple willingness to provide for some of the basic amenities that make many other cities world over, truly world class. Just one look at any of the cities in the US or Europe, for that matter nearer home, Putrajaya City on the outskirts of KL, Malaysia, or Chinese Cities, we will learn that it is a matter of simple attitude. When will our planning and urban development bodies understand the real meaning of development? When will we, the citizens of our country, get some of the basic facilities? Secondly most of us are not even aware of what we should have and deserve, not only in terms of list of amenities but even the required or desired standards for it, in order to demand these from our system. I for one believe that everything has a demand and supply equation.

As the demand for more features and facility increases, the suppliers will make those things available and at a very affordable price. Isn’t this true in real estate sector? Compared to the demands two decade ago, look at the facilities that every developer is offering today. More aware and educated buyers are at the core of ever improving supply chain system.

And that is where the solution lies. We need initiatives that help people understand the need and importance to improved and aesthetically sensitive built environment through the collaboration of professionals, designers, leaders and local communities. It should strive to promote and encourage the best in contemporary urban planning and development and bring modern architecture, traditional craft and design closer to people. And with such initiatives, the day may not be far, when we will start rejecting a city the way we do our films or music albums if they are not good.

(Author is a practising architect based in Hyderabad and writes on design and architecture in India

Corbusier was not the only architectural giant to leave his stamp on India. Louis Kahn, his contemporary also worked in India around the same time and would design and influence future generations of architects in India.

While Corbusier got the opportunity to design the masterplan and the important architectural pieces of Chandigarh, Kahn, did not get to do it in India. He did design the capital complex of Bangladesh, which then was a new country taking birth.

Paul John writes a very interesting article “With Kahn magic Gandhinagar would have  rivalled Chandigarh” that speaks about the missed opportunity for India and Kahn to design Gandhinagar, the new capital of the new state of Guarat.

If Chandigarh is Le Corbusier’s city, Bhubaneswar bears the German Otto Koenigsberger’s signature, Gujarat’s capital Gandhinagar could have had American yogi Louis Kahn’s imprint — a strong rival to Corbusier’s Chandigarh — had the Indian and Gujarat governments allowed Kahn to design the capitol buildings.

Kahn wanted Gandhinagar to be vibrant, symbolising the integration of village and industry, unlike the dull status it suffers today. The stage was all set in August 1964, when Kahn agreed to the honorarium fees to be paid in rupees after being persuaded by architect BV Doshi and industrialist Kasturbhai Lalbhai. Kahn had principally accepted the proposal to design the master plan for Gandhinagar. But he got a rude shock when the chief engineer for roads and buildings KM Kantawala wrote to Kahn that he would not be allowed to design the secretariat, the legislative assembly, the governor’s palace, high court and other related buildings.

There was tremendous political pressure to make Gandhinagar a stoic symbol of Gandhi’s principles of ‘India’s enterprise’. This would have been defeated if the city was designed by a foreign hand.

Kahn declined the offer instantly by writing back an emotionally charged letter stating, “City planning and building planning are one unified art. A city of good buildings reflecting design principles that are understood and followed in subsequent construction grows in beauty and importance.”

For Gandhinagar, Kahn had ambitious plans, something he had not tried elsewhere in the world. Kahn desired that Gandhinagar symbolise integration of land, civic services and buildings as one architecture. Finally in January 1965, the Cornell-educated HK Mewada who worked as a trainee under Le Corbusier on the Chandigarh project and a staunch Gandhian clinched the job.

The mill owners in Ahmedabad led by Kasturbhai Lalbhai and supported by architects like BV Doshi, Anant Raje, Achyut Kanvinde, Charles Correa and AR Prabhawalker wanted Kahn to build Gandhinagar to rival Chandigarh. This episode in history is vividly mentioned in Ravi Kalia’s book ‘Gandhinagar-building national identity in post colonial India.’

All that went for a toss as Asian countries caught on to this craze. The Petronas became the tallest building for a few years, only to be eclipsed by Taipei 101 in Taiwan. And then came the big kahuna of tall buildings, the Burj Khalifa.

And this is just the race for the top position. Change it to the top ten and there are dozens of buildings all across Asia, North America, and Russia that try to reach for the skies.

In all this, India is prominently absent.

Monika Halan writes a very well-laid out article titled: Reaching for the Sky: How Tall is my country.

She concludes

… it does not look as if India or Indians are unduly worried about failing on another parameter of global ranking. The lack of interest or even public debate on getting India on the tall building map could mean several things. One, we are not at the stage of economic growth where having the tallest building becomes something to think about. Two, there is no massive speculative real estate bubble in the country and cheap money is certainly not an issue. Three, the argumentative Indian does not need the prop of an icon of American culture to define India’s identity or its place in the world. Or it could just be that we are so sure that a fire in the tallest building will end in disaster with the fire engines (that can reach all of 10 storeys) stuck in a traffic jam caused by a broken-down cycle on the main road. Nope, we don’t even want to go that way.

Tall buildings serve their purpose in urban areas. Contrary to popular thinking they can be more sustainable in all aspects than their height challenged counterparts. And if India takes that road and goes tall, all power to the builders. But if its just to get bragging rights, then its a waste of time, money and opportunity.

Since the 90’s we have had proclamations from politicians wanting to make Mumbai the next  Shanghai, Singapore or Dubai; depending on the flavor of the month.

What most people dont realize is that Nariman Point is over 40 years old in the present form. And its buildings are crumbling or in poor shape. And the rents are double that of Midtown Manhattan.

Infrastructure wise, its not as bad as other parts of Mumbai. However it would serve some owners well to demolish and build more efficient buildings, in terms of space, design and sustainability. Then the sky-high rents are justified.

Inevitably it may happen. As more and more businesses move away, owners might do just that. I’d rather they be proctive about it, than doing it as a reaction to market forces alone.

UBS, JP Morgan lead Nariman Point exodus

By Pooja Thakur, for Bloomberg

MUMBAI: UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are leading an exodus of finance companies from Mumbai’s Nariman Point financial district as they balk at paying double midtown-Manhattan rents for crumbling four-decade-old buildings.

UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, moved to a new complex on the site of a drive-in cinema about nine miles north. JPMorgan, the second-biggest US lender, shifted to an adjacent suburb, while private-equity firm KKR & Co. went about three miles north of Nariman Point. Axis Bank and broker Motilal Oswal Financial Services are moving in the next year.

They are departing a district reclaimed from the Arabian Sea in 1940 that is marred by traffic jams and poor sanitation, and constrained by a 46 year old law that limits building height. The city’s shortcomings and fragmentation may hinder Mumbai, with the fourth-most expensive office space in the world, from establishing a financial center to rival Shanghai and Dubai.

"Transforming Mumbai into a world class financial center is very distant," said Sunil Saberwal, chief executive officer of Bombay First, an organization modeled on London First to work towards the regeneration of Mumbai. "We are at least 15 to 20 years away from something like that. Even then, Mumbai will not be as beautiful as Dubai, but it will be functional."

If Mumbai doesn’t get its act together by 2030 by improving transportation, housing and water systems, and reducing costs, the city may lose out to places such as Dubai as Western companies seek a base in the time zone, Saberwal said.

Continue reading at BloombergUTV

India’s urban awakening: Building inclusive cities, sustaining economic growth

India has a young and rapidly growing population—a potential demographic dividend. But India needs thriving cities if that dividend is to pay out. New MGI research estimates that cities could generate 70 percent of net new jobs created to 2030, produce around 70 percent of Indian GDP, and drive a near fourfold increase in per capita incomes across the nation.

Handled well, India can reap significant benefits from urbanization. MGI offers a range of recommendations, the vast majority of which India could implement within five to ten years. If India were to follow the recommendations, it could add 1 to 1.5 percent to annual GDP growth, bringing the economy near to the double-digit growth to which the government aspires.

Surging growth and employment in cities will be a powerful magnet. MGI projections show India’s urban population soaring from 340 million in 2008 to 590 million in 2030. And this urban expansion will happen at a speed quite unlike anything India has seen before. It took India nearly 40 years (between 1971 and 2008) for the urban population to rise by nearly 230 million. It will take only half the time to add the next 250 million.

India has the potential to unlock many new growth markets in its cities, many of them not traditionally associated with India including infrastructure, transportation, health care, education, and recreation. MGI projects that, to meet urban demand, the economy will have to build between 700 million and 900 million square meters of residential and commercial space a year. In transportation, India needs to build 350 to 400 kilometers of metros and subways every year, more than 20 times the capacity building of this type that India has achieved in the past decade. In addition, between 19,000 and 25,000 kilometers of road lanes would need to be built every year (including lanes for bus-based rapid transit systems), nearly equal to the road lanes constructed over the past decade.

Cities can also deliver a higher quality of life. Urban scale benefits means the cost of delivering basic services is 30 to 40 percent cheaper in concentrated population centers than in sparsely populated areas. But to reap such benefits, India needs to meet an unprecedented policy challenge. If it fails to do so, this could seriously jeopardize its growth and risk high unemployment.

Although urban India has attracted investment on the back of strong growth, its cities are still failing to deliver even a basic standard of living for their residents after years of chronic underinvestment. Unless it steps up investment in its cities, India could well lose the productivity dividend of urban living. Today, in per capita terms, India’s annual capital spending of $17 is only 14 percent of China’s $116 and less than 6 percent of New York’s $292.

MGI estimates that India needs to invest $1.2 trillion just in capital expenditure in its cities over the next 20 years, equivalent to $134 per capita per year, almost eight times the level of spending today. If India taps into five sources of funding used in cities around the world—monetized land assets, higher property taxes, user charges that reflect costs, debt and public-private partnerships, and formula-based government funding—its largest cities could generate as much as 80 percent of the funding they require from internal sources.

Making the Cities of India More Sustainable

Article by Warren Karlenzig at Green Flow

With Mumbai, one of the largest cities of the world, treating only 30-40 percent of its sewage, experiencing five-hour traffic delays and hosting massively expanding unplanned slums, urban sustainability needs to be viewed through a different lens than elsewhere.

India will add an additional 26 cities of one million or more by 2030 to its 42 one million+ cities today. The 2008 population in cities of 340 million in 2008 will soar to 590 million by 2030. The need for much improved urban housing and health services, let alone better planning, governance and carbon management, threatens the nation’s and thus the world’s economic stability: India’s population by 2030 is forecast to overtake China’s. 

A report released this month by the McKinsey Global Institute, " India’s Urban Awakening," provides a rich and thorough analysis of the challenges faced by Indian cities, while also providing a clear agenda for future improvements. Changes will need to occur at the local, state and national level, and will require the active participation of the international business community through public-private partnerships.

First the bad news.

As a contrast to China, which has staged much of its recent urban growth in nationally planned phases targeted at geographies, economies and infrastructure, Indian cities are experiencing rapid unplanned growth. Major financial investment, to the tune of $1.2 trillion over the next 20 years, will be needed to address how Indian cities are falling short of meeting even a basic standard of living in:

Water supply: will need to increase 3.5 times current supply to meet basic demand by 2030

Sewage: treatment will need to increase two times current levels to meet demand by 2030

Solid waste: will need to increase six times today’s treatment levels by 2030 because of consumption expected by an emerging middle class.

Public transit access and service: 20 times the capacity of metros and subways will need to be added over what has been provided in the past ten years

Affordable housing: will need to increase 10 times by 2030 to meet expected needs.

Slum populations that now comprise 24% of India’s urban population will need to be addressed with formal affordable housing programs and housing structures.

Oddly, no forecasts were made in "India’s Urban Awakening" regarding the amount or mix of energy that will be needed to meet the needs of India’s cities. With massive growth in electricity use for buildings (at least 40% of India currently is not connected to the power grid), large increases in personal auto ownership, and volatile global energy supplies and pricing, India is faced with urban growth-associated issues that if unaddressed threaten the very core of its existence as a nation.

According to the McKinsey report, however, India has sufficient time and the means (with international financial, business and humanitarian partners) by which to address many of these pressing or devastating issues. The McKinsey Institute report also presented a framework for a plan by which India can meet the financial need to increase spending on cities from its current rate of 0.5% to 2% of GDP.

On a per-capita basis, India now spends 14% of what China spends on its cities and only 4% of what the United Kingdom spends on its cities.

The key elements of the report plan outlined five strategies for meeting its urban financial obligations, most of which India currently ranks "poor" in:

1. Monetize land assets.

2. Maximize property taxes and usage charges.

3. Establish a formula-based grants systems from state and central government.

4. Use appropriate debt and private-sector participation (i.e., public-private partnerships).

5. Create enabling systems and city development funds to facilitate use of revenue sources.

The report also outlined four significant "dimensions" besides funding, on which Indian cities need to concentrate improvements in order to successfully transform urban economies and sustainability opportunities:

1. Shape: Where people live. Unlike China, India has made no real attempt to plan where growth of cities will occur, or to determine where new cities will be most needed, and as a result unplanned urban sprawl is increasingly common.

2. Governance: How cities in particular are governed. Develop executive leadership at city level in mid-sized to large cities. India is currently the only G20 nation lacking such leadership. Cities in India are currently governed by their host states from a considerable distance in many cases. The report does cite the success of Kolkata’s (Calcutta) mayor-commission model as a potential national model for executive power combined with administrative-technical support.

3. Sectoral policies: These include economic development, sustainability management, and housing management. India does not plan enough for affordable housing, providing 200,000 units a year versus needed minimum of 2 million units. The number of people living in slums in 2008 was some 82 million, a number that could double by 2030. Recommendations are to establish funding, draw upon external expert advice and hire dedicated managers to focus on these areas.

4. Urban Planning: Change from ad hoc and sporadic planning. Develop longer-term plans (40-50 year) with nested 20-year master plans designating land uses, transportation services, infrastructure and building typologies that are actionable on the ground with transparent public processes. Use modeling and "fly-overs" to educate stakeholders of planning options (Singapore, London and New York are cited for best practices). India’s current urban planning processes exist as documents only, and are not executed or followed in reality.

The report in its introduction observes: "The speed of urbanization poses an unprecedented managerial and policy challenge–yet India has barely engaged in a discussion about how to handle this seismic shift in the makeup of the nation."

From my experience, I would dispute the assertion that the country is barely engaged in such discussions. My firm Common Current and our partners have been involved in a lively series of exchanges with high-level officials from national ministries and planning bodies in India regarding the future of its cities, with sustainability focused approaches in renewable energy, water and transportation infrastructure being key points of discussion.

How India’s national urban planning plays out on localized levels in actual cities, though, remains to be seen. Whatever may transpire, "India’s Urban Awakening" is an invaluable resource for determining just how the path forward can be understood and, hopefully, navigated.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active urban sustainability strategy consultancy. He is author of How Green is Your City? The SustainLane US City Rankings and a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.

Real estate is one marker on the state of the economy. And in the case of Mumbai it looks like the already inflated market is going even higher.

On the back of a revival in demand, real estate developers are again building super luxury apartments, say experts.

Consultancy firms Jones Lang Lasalle Meghraj (JLLM) and Knight Frank India said there are about 7,000 such apartments to be delivered within a year in Mumbai alone, where the cost is not below Rs4.7 crore for a single unit.

“After the recession got over, real estate developers are back building high-end super luxury projects because there is good demand for such projects. At the same time, margins are also higher in these projects,” JLLM country head and chairman Anuj Puri told PTI. [ link to article ]

Are real estate prices in Mumbai really sustainable in the long run ?

He poses a very valid question about Chandigarh, India’s first planned city in the Modern era. As an architect I have always been enamoured by the city and on the few visits there, have found it to be so very different from most Indian cities. However that is the architect in me, that thinks so.

Many a resident of the city lament about the things that dont work and how the planning is just so alien.

Himanshu builds up a really good arguement for the city.

Is Chandigarh a model city?

Himanshu Burte / New Delhi 

The first early example of what we can call a “rational” city, Chandigarh can be either loved or hated. In the first of a series of articles on architecture and architects that have, for better or worse, influenced the way Indian cities look and behave, Himanshu Burte critically examines Corbusier’s Chandigarh

Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (1887-1965) was not trained to be an architect. But as Le Corbusier he became perhaps the most influential architect of the 20th century. An early and forceful proponent of a new approach to architecture in the 1920s called “modernism”, the Swiss born French architect famously said, “A house is a machine for living in.” By the mid-20th century, modernism had become the dominant way of building worldwide, including India. Rare in his command of a new rationality, technology and poetry in architecture, Corbusier invented a language of the industrial age. Before modernism, architectural imagination in the West was dominated by centuries-old Greek, Roman and other historic styles of building. Lutyens’ New Delhi, built during the period 1911-29 (the early years of modernism), is a good example of prevalent architectural thinking that modernism attacked.

Chandigarh, which Corbusier planned and designed in the 1950s, epitomised his belief that architecture and urban planning must have a rational problem-solving approach. At the same time, he sought meaning and monumentality through the honest expression of the construction material itself. Though modernist architecture was not new to India when Corbusier made his first visit, his work in Chandigarh and Ahmedabad was to greatly influence Indian architecture.

THE INTENT

Corbusier’s final city plan (developed from that of the American planner Albert Mayer) for Chandigarh epitomised the modernist idea of what a rational city should be like — right angled street grids, straight, wide roads for increasing automobile use, lots of (preferably continuous) open space around stand-alone buildings, greenery, light and air for every inhabitant. This was the dream that had emerged by the early 20th century in response to the nightmare of dirt and disease in the crowded medieval city in Europe with its “irregular” street patterns. For a new-born India too, Chandigarh represented a dramatic rejection of “traditional” urban layouts that had grown without a master-plan. So Chandigarh is often the preferred template for the modern Indian city in the middle-class imagination.

SETTING AN EXAMPLE

Perhaps Corbusier’s architectural vision expressed in the ensemble called the Capitol Complex (Secretariat, Legislative Assembly and High Court) has proved more enduring than his city plan. The architecture is abstract, sculptural and monumental. But it uses the humblest of industrial building materials (Reinforced Cement Concrete, or RCC) without any finishing layer of plaster or paint. When it was built (even while under construction, in fact) the Capitol Complex gave a heartening message to young Indian architects building in an impoverished society. It suggested that to be modern, creative and powerful, architecture did not need expensive material or technology. Future masters of Indian architecture like Charles Correa and Balkrishna Doshi (who assisted Corbusier on Chandigarh) internalised that message and went on to modify modernism creatively to align it better with the Indian context. Correa’s Portuguese Church in Mumbai, Doshi’s Institute of Indology in Ahmedabad, and Shivnath Prasad’s ShriRam Centre, New Delhi, show a very direct influence of Corbusier’s approach at Chandigarh. Among young architects today, the work of Gurjeet Singh Matharoo (Ahmedabad) and of Mathew Ghosh Architects Pvt Ltd (Bangalore) follows on Corbusier’s example. 

THE PROBLEMS

Over the decades, many progressive planners in India have come to see problems with Chandigarh. One simple issue is about climate. It turns out that the winding, disorderly traditional streets were climatically sensible since they were shaded by buildings. The wide open spaces of Chandigarh are not hospitable in the scorching summer or chilly winter. And, notwithstanding the Nano, sensible people and planners today realise that public transport, not the private car, is what must be encouraged.

The Capitol Complex, in particular, while extremely powerful as a composition, reveals the problems with architecture conceived as an isolated and remote object. As the seat of a democratic government, it is ironic that the large paved open spaces of the complex are so inhospitable by day. The rough concrete surfaces also deny the simplest of visual pleasures we all seek in our environment. For a lot of people, especially non-architects, the high-minded austerity is dispiriting. More dispiriting is the damage caused to the concrete because of the extremes of hot and cold that Chandigarh experiences. Most architects today acknowledge the new pathways opened for Indian architecture by Corbusier at Chandigarh, but have also learnt to apply his stated concern for local climate, appropriate construction techniques and building function in a more directly accountable manner.

THE FINAL ANALYSIS

Corbusier’s concrete-heavy vision does not sit well with the current commitment to sustainability, because steel and cement are both highly energy intensive materials. However, the fact that Corbusier tried to develop a modern architectural language responsive to the climate of Chandigarh poses important questions to the big new airconditioned glass buildings mushrooming in Indian cities. Though there is debate about their effectiveness, he did develop new forms like the giant porches and concrete screens in response to Chandigarh’s climate.  By contrast, with more advanced and energy-guzzling technology at their disposal, many architects and owners are being less rational than the poet of concrete. They avoid a thoughtful design response to climate and turn to airconditioning to solve problems created by the desire for a modern image. Chandigarh, with all its problems, shows this to be a false modernity, which believes in glass almost superstitiously.