Unesco recognition for Capitol Complex after a decade

French architect Le Corbusier, who designed India's first planned modern city of Chandigarh post Independence, had his own ways beyond the boulevards and magnificent architectural monuments he passionately created.

Several decades after Corbusier’s death, his marvellous architectural creation of the Capitol Complex in Chandigarh last Sunday bagged the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) heritage status, something that the city had been vying for over 10 years.

Corbusier was not the first choice for this large-scale dream project to design an entire city from scratch that was to stand out as the face of India's emerging aspirations and modernity. American architects Matthew Nowicki and Albert Mayer were first on the list. As Nowicki tragically died in a plane crash and Mayer resigned thereafter, the project fell into the hands of Corbusier.

That's not all. Even Corbusier was unsure whether or not to accept the project. Two Indian officials even visited his office in Paris in 1950 to convince him and work out the modalities. Corbusier finally relented, not for the sake of money as his annual salary was far too less.

Corbusier knew it was a project of a lifetime, of a scale no one had imagined. For someone like him, who could live up to his ideas and imagination brought him in. He now had a chance to put his theories, by then and at his age only on paper, to practice.

His Capitol Complex designs in Chandigarh have brought rare accolade. A Unesco tag brings along not funds, but state-of-the art expertise that would help preserve the monumental structures-- the Open Hand, High Court, the state Secretariat and the Legislative Assembly. Le Corbusier declined to move to India where his project was to flourish.

 He would visit the upcoming city a few times in a year. In a decade or so, his creations came alive mesmerising architects and global citizens with a taste of good life and professed urban thinking.

    Chandigarh stands to gain from an increased number of tourist footfall as well. Last Sunday, at the 40th session of the World Heritage Committee of Unesco in Istanbul, Corbusier’s Capitol Complex was among the 17 sites that bagged the prestigious heritage tag. Capitol Complex is spread over 100 acres.

Until last year, the Open Hand in the Capitol Complex had been essentially out of bounds for visitors owing to security concerns. Corbusier began work on the Capitol Complex in 1952 and all the structures were completed by 1962. 

The complex was in news when French President Francois Hollande visited the venue. This place was also the central venue for the second international Yoga Day in June this year which saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the top dignitary for the event. So what makes this architecture special? “The Capitol Complex is the embodiment of the spirit of exaltation and power and permanence experienced by Indians on acquiring self-government after a long, bitter struggle for freedom,” the UT administration maintains.

The Capitol area was designed as a great pedestrian plaza with motorised traffic confined to sunken trenches. The complex is planned on a cross axis wherein rigid symmetry has been avoided in placement of various buildings, the administration states.

    The Open Hand monument is highly representative of Le Corbusier’s work conveying “open to give, open to receive”. It's a public symbol for “peace and reconciliation”. Former prime minister the late Jawaharlal Nehru was kept in the loop before the Open Hand symbol got its identity. Corbusier in a letter to Nehru had expressed his passion for the Open Hand concept.

 He wrote that since 1948 he had been obsessed with this symbol of the Open Hand which he wished to erect in the foreground of the Himalayas. Corbusier impressed upon Nehru, saying that it could also become a symbol of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM). The Open Hand is a 26-metre-high sculpture which osculates with the wind.

 The Punjab and Haryana High Court building is L-shaped and has a rectilinear frame with eight courtrooms located on the main façade. For the design, double roof was provided.

The space between the two roofs is left open to enable air flow to move. The Secretariat building was built in horizontal concrete slabs and is 254-metre long and 42-metre high.

The administration website says the Secretariat building has “close resemblance to the Marseilles apartment block, one of Corbusier's earlier projects”. It has many small square windows dotting the front and rear views.

 The Assembly building was completed in 1962. The two legislative chambers were conceived as free standing, curvilinear forms enclosed within a rectilinear shell, carrying on one side the entrance portico and on the opposite side band of offices, the administration states.

 “The magnificent part of the Punjab Assembly is that it is crowned by a massive hyperbolic tower, extending above the roofline and providing a sculptural and dramatic look against the backdrop of distant hills 128 feet in diameter,” it maintains.

The Chandigarh administration has been vying for the Unesco heritage status since the past nine years. It then succeeded in getting the name of the city included in the tentative list. Twin attempts were made in 2009 and 2011 to get the heritage status, but in vain. Nominations from seven countries-- France, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Argentina, Japan and India-- were included in the list works of  Corbusier last Sunday.