Le Corbusier's Model City?

  Chandigargh, India
Sunday, June 4, 2006

Came to see Chandigargh, which is the capital of Punjab state, but also of Harayana, as they are joined states; there are a couple of others in India which operate as joint states.

Roughly, from what I have gathered, when it was decided to move the Punjab capital (from Armitsar I think), they wanted to build a brand new city which would be clean and shiny. They chose Le Corbusier, of international fame, and he made the proposals for the entire city, a grid where blocks of housing, shopping, commerce etc, are interspersed with trees and gardens. However he also was directly responsible for some of the municipal building designs themselves (unfortunately security has been tightened on the two I knew about so when I got the (free)tour bus to take me there, I couldn't get off, unlike what the guide book had stated, and even from the upper deck,trees and artificial mounds of landscaped garden obscured the view to get any worthwhile photos.)

The other activity, indeed the main mission, was to get new specs made, as I ran out of time whilst in Bangkok to do this. I could get replacement lenses for my own specs within the same day, but the ones I wanted to go with the frame design, as it turned out, take 4-5 days to get from the lab.
The places I did stop at were, first, Nek Chand's fantasy rock garden,
which is a very nice landscaped stone garden, with many statuettes etc,
all made from junk, such as broken bakelite electric wall sockets or
broken pottery. Nice fountains and contrived waterfalls and rock faces
and the visitor is led through a one-way circuit along channelled-out sort of lanes, surrounded by stone walling. Secondly, I went to the artificial lake, part of Le Corb's original plan, but it was nothing very inspired to my mind, just really a family 1/2-day-out place, for those who wanted to look at swans while gorging on ice-cream, or float around in one of the paddle boats.
Anyway, with the order placed, and my new lenses to replace my existing ones in my present specs, I decided to shoot off for 5 or so days to Shimla, ie back into the lower Himalayas, ex-British hill station (and a very large one), cooler weather, and after all, I couldn't see myself enthusing for 5 days about Le Corb's grand plan in the blazing hot weather.