Chandigarh is a city in northern India, located 240 km from Delhi and the capital of two states at once (Punjab and Haryana). It is one of the country's youngest administrative centers: it was created in the early 1950s after British India was divided into India and Pakistan. The newly formed state of Punjab needed a new capital (the former, the city of Lahore, went to Pakistan), and if at first they tried to adapt the existing cities for this purpose, then in 1950 it was decided to build the capital from scratch in a new place. The most ardent supporter of this initiative was the first prime minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru. He proclaimed Chandigarh "a symbol of national faith in the future," marking "freedom from the backward traditions of the past," and invited Le Corbusier to make the slogan a reality.
In his master plan, Chandigarh Le Corbusier divided the city into 47 sectors measuring 800 by 1200 meters each, and organized the hierarchy of the transport network according to the "7V" principle, strictly dividing flows in terms of speed and throughput from the highway (V1) to the sidewalk (V7). Along the boundaries of the sectors (each of which was assigned its own function), thus, there were highways, and around the city a green zone was provided with a width of 16 kilometers - this "green ring" was to ensure that no new construction in the immediate vicinity of Chandigarh was carried out will not.
Together with Le Corbusier, his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, the spouses Maxwell Fry and Jane Drewy (Great Britain), as well as a group of nine Indian architects worked on the appearance of the new capital. It was to them that Corbyu entrusted the work on the projects of most of Chandigarh's buildings, focusing himself on Sector 1 - the government's Capitol district. Its development was decided as a composition of large autonomous, "poetically reacting" buildings, the axes of which determine the structure of open spaces, and its culmination was the Palace of Justice. This building is a giant rectangular canopy, under which two buildings are hidden from the scorching Indian sun, separated by three monumental pillars, painted in bright colors. The windows of the offices, as in most other buildings of Chandigarh, are protected by the so-called "sun cutters" - traditional for Indian architecture openwork sun-protection bars "jali", interpreted in the language of modernism. Equally large and majestic are the neighboring buildings of Le Corbusier - in particular, the Secretariat building 254 meters long, which seems to be hovering above the ground, and the Parliament, the hyperbolic volume of the conference room which originates from cooling towers, and the parabola of the concrete portico in profile resembles horns sacred bulls.
Today Chandigarh is virtually closed to the public: the political situation in this region bordering on Pakistan is far from stable, so fans of Le Corbusier's work cannot get into the city without special permission. Alexei Naroditsky managed to get such permission, and, accompanied by security guards, he filmed the embodied modernist paradise for 10 days. The curator of the exhibition, Elena Gonzalez, proudly notes that the photographer did not succumb to the temptation to capture barefoot beggar children and girls in bright saris against the background of Le Corbusier's creations. It is as if not India is before us - except that the bright all-pervading sun betrays the secret of the geographical location of these huge concrete volumes, fascinating with their plasticity and symphony of the rhythms of the facades. And we must admit that in the empty and windswept wing of Moire the photographs of these objects are doubly impressive. If the recent "Parallels" sounded mainly due to the contrast of plywood boards and exposed brick walls, then Corbyu is absolutely in place here. Yes, this is such a large, honest and, at first glance, not always cozy architecture.
By the way, these objects and the surrounding spaces are not similar to India in their cleanliness - however, in the preface to the exhibition it is said that Chandigarh is the cleanest city in the country, and also has the highest per capita income and the largest number of secondary and higher education establishments per inhabitant. Can this be considered a merit of a rational master plan and a high-quality living environment? Photos by Alexei Naroditsky make you believe that this is the case.
