Maker of everyday Chandigarh: A new book highlights Pierre Jeanneret’s contribution in creation of Chandigarh

Rajnish Wattas

It was in November 1950 when PN Thapar, the Chief Administrator of the Chandigarh Project, and PL Varma, its Chief Engineer, landed up in Paris to find a suitable architect-planner to design Punjab’s ambitious new capital. They had come to meet Le Corbusier, a famous Swiss-French architect and planner, to design the dream city. He had been highly recommended by London-based Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, the British architect couple who had themselves agreed to join the project for three years. However, in a great act of humility, the couple recommended that Corbusier, and not them, was the visionary giant big enough to meet this challenge.

But Corbusier flatly refused to leave his Paris office and move to Chandigarh. “Your capital can be designed here in Paris,” he said, and insisted to take on board his cousin and erstwhile partner Pierre Jeanneret, who would be permanently stationed in Chandigarh, whereas Corbusier would make trips to oversee the work.

Corbusier and Jeanneret arrived at the site of the new capital in February 1951. Corbusier stuck to his word and designed extensively from his Paris office and sent drawings from there, while the latter became his points-person stationed in Chandigarh till 1965 as its Chief Architect.

A recent book, ‘Pierre Jeanneret and Chandigarh’ by Shivdutt Sharma (Niyogi Books), who had also worked on the project, is a devotee’s ode to his guru. Part memorabilia, part documentation, the book is an emotively loaded remembrance of the small-built man of Gandhian simplicity and humility.

While Corbusier envisioned Chandigarh’s Master Plan and designed its iconic projects like the Capitol Complex, City Centre, Government Museum & Art Gallery, Lake Club and the colleges of architecture and art — bulk of the city’s civic buildings, educational and health infrastructure and government housing were designed by Jeanneret. One was the dreamer and the other the implementer. The book highlights Jeanneret’s contribution to the creation of Chandigarh, which is often overshadowed by the accomplishments of his more illustrious cousin.

Pierre Jeanneret-Gris was born on March 22, 1896, at Geneva, not far from his older cousin Le Corbusier’s birthplace in Switzerland. As a young student, Pierre was greatly influenced by his cousin Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, who in 1920 adopted the name Le Corbusier (an altered form of his maternal grandfather’s name, Lecorbésier) as a pseudonym. From 1922 until 1940, Corbusier and Jeanneret worked together in partnership in their studio in Paris. But World War II took them away on their own individual paths only to come together again at Chandigarh.

Noted architectural historian and curator Maristella Casciato writes in her ‘Foreword’ to the book, “It is admirable how Shivdatt Sharma has taken Jeanneret to be his model to the point of making him his alter ego; in many ways, this book has morphed into an autobiography of Sharma.”

Casciato showcases Jeanneret’s lesser-known talent as an excellent photographer, and reproduces his historic black and white image of the very first dirt road laid out on the Chandigarh site. Besides this vintage picture, she also reproduces impressions of numerous famous photographers who would visit Chandigarh city as it rose and their interactions with Jeanneret.

One of them, Dolf Schnebli, on a visit in 1956, recalls his conversation with Jeanneret’s young Indian colleagues in the studio. “I asked how they communicated with their boss who spoke no English. A smiling young woman told me… language was no problem, he comes to the drafting table and carefully studies their drawings — when he says ‘bad’ — he sits down and starts sketching on the plan… they know exactly how to correct the drawing….”

Sharma’s primary impetus in writing the book has been to correct the general perception about the two architects. While Corbusier is mainly considered the maker of Chandigarh, the lesser-sung hero of the greatest experiment in urbanism of the 20th century, Jeanneret, did not get his due spotlight. The book covers varied aspects of Jeanneret’s work and his qualities of the heart.

Sharma recounts many anecdotes that portray Jeanneret’s quintessential humility and gentleness. He recalls that while working with him on a private residence, he would go to Jeanneret’s house for site visits in the blistering heat of summer, after the office hours of 8 am to 1.30 pm. Jeanneret noticed that and told him to stop coming; instead, he began picking Sharma up in his vehicle. “During his visits to my house, he would often meet members of my family, especially my old parents. My mother would feel embarrassed, but happy, when he would shake hands with her. He greatly enjoyed the kheer or halwa cooked by her,” remembers Sharma.

In 1965, Sharma went to Milan, Italy, for higher studies. During this period, Jeanneret’s niece Jacqueline took him to Geneva for medical treatment. She also invited Sharma to visit them and meet Jeanneret. While Sharma had planned a day-long visit, Jacqueline persuaded him to stay longer. These visits soon became a regular feature. On one of these visits, Jeanneret invited Sharma to join him for a visit to his sister. On the way, Sharma got an opportunity to visit Corbusier’s parents’ house, Villa Le Lac, at Corseaux designed by Corbusier himself.

In his later professional years, Sharma was able to recreate at Le Corbusier Centre, the spirit of the pioneering days of the Capital Project team originally working in the Chief Architect’s office in Sector 19. Though meant to be a temporary structure built with low-cost materials, the office’s design by Jeanneret, comprising two linear blocks, punctuated by a sculptural porch, is a marvel with ingenious detailing for climate control. There is an air of simplicity and austerity, yet an elegance of aesthetics is imbued in it.

Later, when the Chief Architect’s office moved out, the original structure fell into disuse and became dilapidated. The Chandigarh Administration wanted to sell the land at a high price, but due to huge pressure by the city’s architectural fraternity, it was finally decided to restore this office to its original character and turn it into Le Corbusier Centre instead. Sharma took up the challenge and did such a marvellous job of its restoration that its walls echo the times when building housed not only Le Corbusier’s office but of all the European architects and their Indian associates. Sharma’s literary tribute captures Jeanneret’s genius that lies in creating aesthetics through local materials and indigenous skills and architecture governed by the disciplines of climate control and austere budgets. The unique aesthetics of his residential architecture is based on a play of exposed brickwork, plastered surfaces, and sometimes stone panels. The brick jaalis created by him served as ornamental and functional elements that afforded privacy to terraces and verandahs while allowing ventilation.

Jeanneret’s creative tour de force is the Panjab University campus with its landmark Gandhi Bhawan. Its highly sculptural form in white grit finish symbolises the purity and simplicity of a lotus placed in a large reflecting pool.

Jeanneret was a simple man seeking no grandeur or spotlight in history. He spent most of his spare time in collecting sculptural driftwood, pebbles from the seasonal streams flowing by the city or designing low-cost furniture, durries, and even the first paddle boats for the Sukhna Lake.

His hallmark Chandigarh furniture has now attained an iconic status. The astoundingly huge prices that this modern heritage furniture currently commands in the international markets is, perhaps, a belated realisation of his genius.

The book brings to light fascinating anecdotal history, rare pictures and documents such as a letter by PN Thapar to the First Secretary in the Indian High Commission in London, requesting him to sign the contract document with Le Corbusier on his behalf. There is also a rare handwritten letter in English by him to MS Randhawa seeking his counsel regarding an administrative tangle. His command over English, evident in the letter, surprised everyone because he never used it in oral conversations.

Then, there are the spicy Corbusier-Jeanneret missives to one another, manifesting the complex relationship between the two cousins, expressed at times through acrimonious words, but always closing on reconciliatory notes!

Thoughtfully, the book includes brief memoirs of Jeanneret by other Indian architects of the team. However, those of Jeet Malhotra, the only other living Indian architect from the original team, besides Sharma himself, are missing. Malhotra had worked very closely with both Corbusier and Jeanneret on many of the key projects, and there are also many letters written directly by Corbusier to Malhotra during the later part of the project. Malhotra had also done extensive photographic documentation of the city as it progressed and gifted a box full of his archival negatives to the city during his later years.

The book by Shivdutt Sharma — the ‘grand old man of architecture’— provides a rare eyewitness account of Chandigarh’s history.