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20 HERITAGE DELHI THE HINDU Magazine
Sunday, March 3, 2019 21

RECALL PLACE, WORK, FOLK
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The first city From past to future

Fort Kochi is a lesson that urban planners can
integrate into a larger vision for India
Le Corbusier Download Indian Library App RAHUL SRIVASTAVA &

MATIAS ECHANOVE
lot of value is generated when
designed a city’s official bodies work
with artists to transform
Apublic places into sites of
creativity. There is little doubt that the
precinct of Fort Kochi, part of the
It’s just over 50 but the idea of Chandigarh is as fresh as larger city of Kochi, has contributed
Air, water, light immensely to the world of art by
when it was first conceived by the famed architect (Clockwise from opening up its historical alleys and
left) Sukhna Lake streets for an art biennale.
was created While many parts of India can
artificially by Le unearth similar trajectories and global
Corbusier; the Open connections — from a lane in Lucknow
Hand sculpture; to a street in Chennai — there’s
pieces from the something special about Fort Kochi
Rock Garden and its continuity with the past.
A created by Nek It tells a larger story of the global Creative corners Jew Street at
The sculpture Chand; Le Corbusier; connections and linkages with the Mattancherry, Fort Kochi. H. VIBHU
and the Tower of world that was part of life along
that transfixes
Shadows at Capitol coastal India for centuries. Trade with
you is the
Complex. FLICKR, GETTY the Mediterranean, Arabic cities and historical Kochi from becoming
massive Open IMAGES & AFP Chinese port towns crisscrossed at this something more than an artefact from
Hand with the time, creating a template of the past.
foothills as the its three monumental edifices is coexistence and ways of dealing with
backdrop #70929 where idealised life is celebrated as in conflict that has been studied and Diversity of economics
the Acropolis. debated by scholars like Ashish Nandy Fort Kochi is a lesson that urban
Importantly, Le Corbusier and others. Like the proverbial jewel planners can integrate into a larger
democratised the city. Everyone has in an idiosyncratic historical crown, vision for other parts of India.
access to parks, gardens, wide roads Fort Kochi certainly needs to be Especially its scale, its neighbourhood
and institutions. Buildings are simple celebrated, and art is a wonderful way configurations, its ability to generate a
with an exposed brick or cement of doing it. diversity of economies, old and new.
finish. The lower income housing was Its street patterns are not just quaint;
standardised as two rooms, kitchen Remembering the residents they represent a way of occupying
P. KRISHNA GOPINATH million Partition­uprooted people. and bathroom. This plan was unheard c Having said that, it’s equally important urban space that is linked to a moment
The population is now 1.2 million and of at the time; today it’s the norm. The Capitol to keep in mind that such moves can in history when economic and civic
t is cold and bright. All traces of projected to shoot up. Satellite towns I stand in the middle of the Capitol with its three generate excess value — value beyond spatial configurations worked
dawn’s fog have blown away in the are already compressing a city that is and look at the enormous High Court the cultural and symbolic. There is a together. Just as they do in many
wind coming from the lake. all of 115 sq. km. If proof were needed, on one end. On the other end is the monumental danger of relegating the city’s most neighbourhoods across urban India,
ISunlight streams in through the it’s there in the traffic choking this Assembly, with its curvilinear, edifices is important component, its inhabitants, especially when they are not planned,
thinning neem and bakayan trees that arterial road. moulded finish. Its roof has Le where into subservience to an image of the zoned or divided.
line a central avenue. The Swiss­ I walk down an inner lane in the Corbusier’s signature with a cooling idealized life past. This creates a hardening of value Along with celebrating the past,
French urban planner Le Corbusier fractured shade of bottlebrush and tower that somehow seems is celebrated — both real estate and aesthetic — to a Fort Kochi is also about celebrating
had planned Chandigarh for half a yellow­flowered tecomas to a pair of superfluous. The architect placed as in the point where it starts to shed people how the city’s inhabitants shaped its
low, asbestos­roofed, barrack­like cloud­shaped floating panels for the like old skin. Such a process can never growth, negotiated with local rulers,
structures. A board tells me this is the acoustics inside. It symbolised the Acropolis really sustain a city. In fact, there is a dealt with conflict, created space to
Le Corbusier Centre where the increased only partly because of more hills and then the snow­topped Lutyen’s Delhi’s imperial coldness new industrial India. danger it can do the opposite. The accommodate and segregate (with
architect and his talented team vehicles coming in from neighbouring Himalayas. Le Corbusier was clearly did not appeal much to him. On the plaza is the famous sun dial elements that produced everything pros and cons).
worked to create Chandigarh. towns; the other reason is because particular that nothing should What he did bring to Chandigarh were on Geometric Hill and the wheel and worth celebrating — a lively economy, It is important to expand the story
Now more than 60 years old, there Chandigarh’s citizens are using the obstruct this view. Between the gardens, parks and water bodies. swastika on a winding ramp. a welcoming spirit — can suddenly of the city’s engagement with
is a makeshift quality about main arterial roads even when they mountains and the plains was a Rows of trees line the streets and But it’s the Open Hand that vanish, leaving behind a beautiful but creativity. Not only is the city a
everything inside the building. The don’t need to. Seeing my puzzled depression into which water channels shade the housing sectors. transfixes you, with the foothills in the fragile shell that can burst with the wonderful setting for an art biennale,
walls have photographs of old work look, she explains that after the carrying runoffs from the hills flowed. The largest green belt is along the backdrop. Its presence sublimates the next bubble. it is also an architectural, urban and
sites, architectural drawings, sectors were delineated, Le Corbusier A three mile­long mud and brick dam lake, extending into the city. No other Capitol from a utilitarian cluster into When the tide of tourism turns or civic exception that can become the
correspondence around the city, and connected them all on a grid of roads was built to form an artificial lake Indian city has a garden this size. The soaring art. Its meaning is open to when the ability to travel becomes norm. And what makes it this are its
black­and­white portraits of Le so that people could move between here. And today Sukhna lake Leisure Valley is 8 km long and interpretation; Le Corbusier merely expensive for ordinary people, a inhabitants, both old and new, and its
Corbusier alone or with people like sectors without using the main roads. continues as Chandigarh’s favourite extends through all the sectors, with a said it symbolised both giving and mono­economy drawn only from the neighbourhoods. It has normal civic
Nehru. The latter were meant largely for promenade. nullah running through the middle receiving. Beyond the Hand is past and nourished mostly by artistic issues that most Indian towns have:
inter­city traffic. Gandhi says people that floods during the monsoons. woodland and then the hills. This is capital can become very hard on density, a demand for more housing
On movement and people must be made aware of this or the grid Influenced by nature Water, light and shade are perhaps the point of articulation residents. for old residents, accommodation for
Deepika Gandhi is the director of the will remain under­utilised and arterial It’s morning and I am at the Mughal recurring leitmotifs in the city. The between the present and the eternal, newer workers, dealing with waste
centre, where she came two years roads choked. gardens in Pinjore, just outside the architect considered these as the between man and cosmos. Distinct ecology and battling floods. All this does not
ago. The co­author of a book on Le Le Corbusier philosophised about city. It is quiet. Le Corbusier used to influences that have fashioned our As I retrace my steps it occurs to Of course, this doesn’t seem anywhere take away from the city’s charisma. It
Corbusier’s work on Chandigarh, she urban planning, but Chandigarh was spend time here whenever he could, body and spirit. He believed that me that in its majestic sweep and close to being true of Fort Kochi. only reminds us that it is a breathing,
has brought a new energy to the the first and last city he actually and was impressed by the symmetry “towns have snatched men from spiritual scale, Le Corbusier’s Blessed by its distinct ecology, it is living city. What makes it alive are its
Centre. Visitors have increased designed. Inspired by classical Rome, of the garden, its plants, trees and essential conditions” and therefore Chandigarh is comparable perhaps to both connected to and remains people who are the main connectors
exponentially, and there are regular he conceived of the city as a human fountains. Did India’s architecture sought to re­establish nature in life. Hampi, that magnificent capital of distinct from the world of urban between a glorious past and a future
workshops and seminars on body with a head, torso and limbs. influence him? The open spaces and In a sense Chandigarh is designed another era. aspirations that surround it. Within a of immense possibilities.
Corbusier’s work. The Capitol Complex in the north was courtyard of Akbar’s Fatehpur Sikri on two planes. The heart and the ............................................................................. 20­minute ferry ride, you can reach ..............................................................................
I tell her I am late for our the head, the middle was the city could have been a prototype for the limbs are the houses, hospitals, The photography and classical music the familiar world of metros and glitzy The writers are co-founders of
appointment thanks to the traffic. centre, the limbs the industrial area. Capitol. Sawai Jaisingh’s Jantar Mantar industries and markets where life enthusiast also likes pretending to shops. And it is precisely such a urbz.net, an urban network in Mumbai,
Gandhi says traffic jams have Beyond the Capitol are the Shivalik certainly lent some motifs, but thrives and throbs. The Capitol with read and write. convenient divide that prevents Goa and beyond.