In 1950, the Indian government commissioned Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier to design the city of Chandigarh. The project is often seen as marking a new era of modern architecture in South Asia. Records housed in the Frances Loeb Library at the GSD reveal the challenges of the monumental project as well as its influence and legacy. This semester, Graduate School of Design students Rishita Sen (MArch II 2025) and Neha Harish (MArch II 2025) organized a conversation on India’s rich history in modernist architecture, inspired by the Le Corbusier collection in the Frances Loeb Library Archives and Le Corbusier’s design of Chandigharh.
In collaboration with Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization, and Ines Zalduendo, Special Collections Curator, the group met one evening to view historic objects and share stories that Mehrotra gathered as a result of his proximity to Le Corbusier’s community in India. The gathering is part of a series of “Archives Parties” that Zalduendo offers to the GSD community in collaboration with professors, student groups, and others interested in focusing on a particular theme or subject within the library’s collections.
“We represent a group of South Asian nations at the GSD,” said Sen, “and, because Neha and I are both so familiar with how modernism came to India, we wanted to pay homage to what we know, while setting the stage for future conversations focused on a range of South Asian nations and themes.”
The story of modernism in India starts with its independence from Britain in 1947, when the nation embraced the opportunity to define its identity through architecture and design. While “revivalists” attempted to reinvigorate older forms of Indian architecture to signify this new moment, Jawaharlal Nehru, the nation’s first prime minister, “embraced modernism as the appropriate vehicle for representing India’s future agenda,” writes Mehrotra in Architecture in India Since 1990. Modernism was free of associations with the British Empire and symbolized the pluralistic nation’s desire to be “progressive” and globally connected. Earlier in the century, Art Deco had become popular, introducing the use of reinforced concrete by the Maharajas, explained Mehrotra, and aligning Art Deco with opulence. At the same time, starting in about 1915, Gandhi constructed ashrams with a an aesthetic that grew out of frugality, creating an association between modernism and Gandhi’s ethics of “minimalism,” and the ethos of today’s environmentalism and sustainability.
In 1950, Nehru commissioned Le Corbusier to design Chandigarh, setting in motion the country’s nascent development program and national identity under the era’s premise that, writes Mehrotra, “architects could shape the form not only of the physical environment but of social life.” A culture could be determined by its design.
At the Frances Loeb Library Archives, Harish, Sen, Mehrotra, and Zalduendo gathered with staff, faculty, and students to discuss a range of objects from the university archives as well as Mehrotra’s personal collection. Mehrotra noted how refreshing it was to be able to speak conversationally about these histories, within the context of the typically more formal archives at an institution.
“We were interested in engaging with oral histories,” said Harish, “which have been reiterated over the years.”
“Having grown up in Bombay,” said Mehrotra, “and having known architects who worked in that time, I heard many stories about who went to receive Corbusier at the airport when he travelled from Paris to make his connections to Delhi, or for his projects in Ahmedabad, etc.. Also how in his stays in Mumbai, Doshi and Correa walked with him on Juhu Beach, discussing architecture.” Some of the “whispered accounts” that circulated in the community between Le Corbusier and other architects and contractors in India from the 1950s to 1970s were evident in letters Mehrotra shared. In one, from Le Corbusier to the Indian government, the architect stridently requests an overdue payment. “Everyone believes that Le Corbu received incredible patronage in India,” said Mehrotra, “but, in fact, it was an uphill task, and, as was evident in the letter I shared, the man was going to go bankrupt.”
In other correspondence, notes Harish, “we saw the concept of jugaad,” a Hindi word meaning “make do with what you have,” as Le Corbusier had to “mend and mold the concrete every step of the way. Once he’d had this experience with the concrete looking so handcrafted in India, he could never replicate it anywhere else.” Le Corbusier used concrete for the construction of Harvard’s Carpenter Center, the only building he designed in North America, completed in 1963.
Mehrotra’s revised and updated Bombay Deco (Pictor Publishing), written with the late Sharada Dwivedi, was released in December 2024, and speaks to the history of Art Deco in India. In 2018, Mumbai’s collection of Art Deco buildings, the second largest in the world, was named a UNESCO World Heritage site. Le Corbusier’s use of concrete in Chandigarh rose out of that Art Deco tradition in Mumbai.
“Art Deco resulted in the creation of a whole industry that could produce reinforced concrete,” Mehrotra explained. “So, for Le Corbusier, the technology developed over 30 years. If Art Deco hadn’t happened [in Mumbai], and we weren’t using reinforced concrete, he couldn’t have built Chandigarh—because that’s the material he knew.”
The group also discussed Le Corbusier’s relationship with other key figures, including his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, who collaborated with him on building Chandigarh. Jeanneret and Le Corbusier had practiced together in France for over a decade, until 1937, and then, alongside the couple Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, reunited to design and construct Chandigarh.
Finally, the group celebrated the role that British urban planner Jacqueline Tyrwhitt played in developing architectural projects and discourse in South Asia in the 1940s and ’50s. Trywhitt worked with urban planner Patrick Geddes, editing Patrick Geddes in India, published in 1947, and was a United Nations technical assistance advisor to India and member of the 6th Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in 1947. She served as a professor at the GSD from 1955 to 1969, and, as Dean Sarah Whiting explained, “helped establish and fortify the urban design program in its founding years.” An urban design lectureship named in her honor continues to support visiting scholars at the GSD today.