Chandigarh exemplified tropical modernism, served as inspiration
Dr Christopher Turner is the Keeper of Art, Architecture, Photography and Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, responsible for collections of over 20 lakh objects. The V&A was founded in 1857 and in 1879, the East India Company’s collection of 20,000 Indian objects was transferred to the museum. In Chandigarh for an event that aims to activate urban spaces, Dr Turner speaks to Deepika Gandhi, former director of the Le Corbusier Centre in the city, on a range of topics
Could you give us an overview of the collection in the South Asia gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London?
Our South Asian collection is one of the most significant and comprehensive in the western world, with roughly 50,000 objects — sculpture and paintings, decorative arts, textiles, dress and jewellery, dating from 3000 BC to the present day. We have begun the exciting process of transforming our gallery, and a new one will open in 2028 that will re-present and reinterpret our collections and engage with a new generation of global and diasporic communities. It will include for the first time modern and contemporary South Asian art and design.
Suspended in space will be the 19th century Kochi Ceiling, from a temple in South India, with intricately carved panels which depict Hindu deities and stories from the Ramayana, which was last exhibited at the museum in 1955. New panels by a contemporary artist will be commissioned to fill gaps in the original ceiling, showing continuity and innovation in South Asian design. In November, ‘The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence’ will open at the V&A, showcasing the monumental artistic achievements of the ‘Golden Age’ of the Mughal court (c.1550-1660).
A living school
Nehru insisted that the European architects at Chandigarh employ Indian staff; he wanted it to be a ‘living school’ for local architects, who would train on the job, thereby upskilling a new generation. — Dr Christopher Turner, Victoria and Albert Museum
You recently curated V&A’s exhibition ‘Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence’, which focused on West Africa and India, notably Chandigarh, the first modernist city to be built from scratch anywhere in the world. What intrigued you about this concept?
The exhibition and its deliberations sought to look at the politics behind the concrete of this architectural style to show the story of tropical modernism as one of colonialism and decolonisation, politics and power, defiance and Independence. I was interested in the British contribution to Chandigarh. How the architect couple Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry came to be involved. And how the tropical architecture they pioneered was a late imperial style developed after the Second World War in British West Africa against the background of the decolonial struggle. It was an architecture that sought to work with rather than against climate, adapting European modernism to the hot and humid tropics.
I was also intrigued by why and how, considering the style’s colonial associations, Nehru and other post-colonial leaders, such as Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, so enthusiastically took up tropical modernism, and how British architects such as Drew and Fry survived the transition and continued to work so prominently in these newly Independent countries. I wanted to trace something of the stories of the Indian and African architects who worked alongside them and went on to appropriate and adapt the lessons of tropical modernism to create distinctive regional modernisms.
Indian architects not recognised
Contemporary Indian architects stand on the shoulders of the pioneering first generation of modernists, but so blinded are most historians by the supernova that is Le Corbusier that even inside India, these architects have been little recognised for their contribution to Chandigarh and India’s cultural identity post-Independence. — Dr Christopher Turner, Victoria and Albert Museum
However, it seems Britain itself was not comfortable with the idea of modernism. In such a scenario, how did they feel it could be appropriate to the tropical context?
Modernism was initially unpopular in Britain. Fry and Drew were working against the grain: their minimalist aesthetic, with its explicit rejection of tradition, was seen as too severe for British tastes, but its utilitarianism was seen as appropriate for the colonies. So, in British West Africa (now Gambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria), Drew and Fry developed the tools of tropical modernism, adapting a European modernist aesthetic that valued function over ornament to the hot, humid conditions of the region. Their buildings had a distinctive language of climate control — with adjustable louvres, wide eaves and sun breakers — and attracted a great deal of international interest.
Despite its colonial associations, tropical modernism became an important aspect of nation-building after Independence in both India and Ghana, representing the internationalism and progressiveness of these new democratic countries, distinct from colonial culture.
Considering this, how do you think Chandigarh influenced the development of cities and towns in other developing countries, especially those with a colonial past?
Indeed, Chandigarh served as a shining beacon to newly Independent countries from the Non-Aligned Movement. It exemplified the post-colonial possibilities of modernism. As these nations sought to improve local conditions by jet-propelling modernisation, it was tropical modernism’s apparent lack of ideology (certainly compared with earlier colonial architecture) and its promise of development and modernisation, imagined as a form of neutral technical expertise, that made it so persuasive.
In truth, tropical modernism was not neutral at all but deeply ideological, and it was both opposed by revivalist groups in the former colonies — who thought it to be a colonial imposition — and later subverted and critiqued by those who embraced it.
The Punjab Government invited Drew and Fry to build Chandigarh; they were instrumental in convincing Le Corbusier to head the project. The architect being Swiss-French had no colonial history in India and perhaps served as a useful fig leaf for British involvement. Nehru thought the West should now be ‘on tap, not on top’ and there was a certain self-assurance to this move.
For long and even now, Chandigarh is singularly attributed to Le Corbusier, minimising the contribution of not just the other three European members of the team but also the Indian architects who rose to the challenge and later became the torchbearers for what Chandigarh stood for. How did you try to address that in the exhibition?
We sought to balance the story of Le Corbusier — whose aura tends to overshadow everyone else — and the contribution of the other European architects by focusing on the Indian contribution to Chandigarh. Drew and Fry were in Chandigarh from 1951-55 and Le Corbusier only made twice-yearly visits. The Indian architects who did most of the hard work of building the city should be better known, recognised and celebrated for their great contribution to modernism.
So, for example, we showed plans by architect Aditya Prakash of the Tagore Theatre; construction photos shot by Jeet Malhotra, a junior architect on the project I was lucky enough to meet in Delhi aged 92; we showed a film featuring the thousands of construction workers shot by Alain Tanner made in the ’60s; in that vein, we also had sculptures by highway engineer Nek Chand. Alongside beautiful teak models made by Rattan Singh, Le Corbusier’s Sikh model maker, who had once worked for the Viceroy in Shimla, we had a library chair designed by the architect Eulie Chowdhury, whose design work is often misattributed to Jeanneret.
Nehru insisted that the European architects at Chandigarh employ Indian staff rather than bring their own offices to India; he wanted it to be a ‘living school’ for local architects, who would train on the job, thereby upskilling a new generation.
Rather than focusing exclusively on European actors, our research centres celebrate the Indian architects working alongside them who have been insufficiently recognised, rendered almost invisible in the archives. A 1961 issue of Marg celebrated the achievements of these Indian ‘Founders of Chandigarh’. Rather than seeing Chandigarh as a gift or imposition by European modernists, part of the International Style’s global spread, Marg made it clear that these Indian ‘torch-bearers of modernism’ co-created the city by treating them on a par with the European architects. ‘India was lucky to get Le Corbusier; Le Corbusier was lucky to get India.’ Chandigarh was an Indian city: a proud manifestation of the aspirations of the Nehruvian nation-state.
This generation of talented young practitioners, who cut their teeth constructing the new city, went on to build much of modern India. Many of them would become critical of Le Corbusier’s legacy and seek to escape his influence, fusing the lessons of his sculptural functionalism with a greater sensitivity to India’s architectural heritage and social context (which the Europeans did not have) to create a unique tropical style.
Contemporary Indian architects stand on the shoulders of this pioneering first generation of modernists, but so blinded are most historians by the supernova that is Le Corbusier that even inside India, these architects have been little recognised for their contribution to Chandigarh and India’s cultural identity post-Independence.
Yes, the Indian team is not even recognised, leave aside celebrated, for the immense contribution they made to the development of the ‘new modern India’. How do you feel we could do this now?
I ended the talk that Foundation Chandigarh invited me to deliver at the Capitol Complex with a provocation, or plea: can’t we add to all the Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret museums in Chandigarh, one celebrating these pioneering Indian architects, who did most of the work to make it, before all the evidence of their contribution (both buildings and archives) is lost? I’m sure that in this enterprise, you would have every assistance from architectural historians, both in India and internationally, as well as from institutions like the V&A and the Global Humanities Centre at the University of Cambridge, as these are the more diverse and underrepresented stories that we all now want to see told.
Such an initiative would not be just about the past but also the present and the future. Many of the buildings the Indian architects created are under threat of demolition or have already been destroyed. Perhaps such a project might provoke a reappraisal of their cultural value.
That brings us to an important issue of museums not just as passive repositories of artefacts but as active promoters of culture and heritage. How can museums stay relevant today?
It is important that museums are not mausoleums, preserving the past in aspic. They are not just passive repositories of objects, but should be dynamic, keeping pace with wider societal issues and conversations, about sustainability and decolonisation, restitution and repatriation. To stay relevant, museums have to evolve and adapt with the changing needs and interests of their audiences, as we are seeking to do, for example, with our own South Asian Gallery. If they do this, inviting wider public participation and by making positive arguments for the importance of culture and heritage to everyone’s lives and sense of belonging, museums can be important learning centres, engaged places of civic pride and catalysts for change.
