From the streets of Chandigarh to the modernist landscapes of Switzerland and Germany — a journey through architecture, ideas and the making of modern India.
The Opening
There are moments when a journey changes the way you see a place you thought you already knew.During my recent journey through Switzerland and Germany, I found myself looking at modern architecture differently. Buildings that I had previously understood primarily through their form began to reveal something deeper — ideas about society, movement, light, human scale and the kind of future architects imagined.
And somewhere along that journey, my thoughts returned to Chandigarh.
To the enormous concrete forms of the Capitol Complex.
To the geometric shadows of the Tower of Shadows.
To the Open Hand rising against the Himalayan landscape.
And to a question that I have often found fascinating:
What was Le Corbusier really trying to tell India when he designed Chandigarh?
Chandigarh Was Never Just an Architectural Project
After the Partition of 1947, India was not simply building another city.
It was trying to imagine itself anew.
Chandigarh was conceived as a new capital for Punjab, and Le Corbusier was brought in to develop the city’s master plan after an earlier scheme by Albert Mayer. UNESCO describes Chandigarh as a major expression of the Modern Movement and identifies its Capitol Complex as the most complete contribution to Le Corbusier’s principles and the idea of the Radiant City.
This is important because it changes the way we look at Chandigarh.
It wasn’t simply about concrete.
It wasn’t simply about geometric buildings.
It wasn’t even simply about modern architecture.
It was about modern India.
A newly independent country was asking: What should the capital of a new India look like?
And the answer was radically different from the palaces, forts and colonial administrative buildings that had dominated India’s architectural landscape.
A City Built Around an Idea
Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh was organised through a highly structured system of sectors, roads, green spaces and civic functions. The Capitol Complex was positioned at the symbolic head of the city, with the Assembly, High Court and Secretariat forming its principal architectural ensemble.
Modernism was never really about making buildings look modern. It was about asking whether architecture could change the way people lived.
During my recent Swiss and German journey, I found myself repeatedly noticing the same questions that shaped twentieth-century modernism: How should buildings respond to light? How should people move through a city? And can architecture create a better relationship between the individual and the collective?
The Connection to Chandigarh
Modernist ideas had developed through decades of experimentation in Europe, but Chandigarh gave those ideas a completely different setting.
Here, modernism encountered India’s climate, landscape, politics, culture and aspirations.
Le Corbusier brought modernism to India. But India changed the way that modernism had to work.
Chandigarh’s architecture responded to climate through devices such as sunscreens, double-skinned roofs, reflecting pools, natural air-cooling and rainwater catchment. The complex also used Le Corbusier’s Modulor system, based on human proportions, in its exterior spaces.
The Capitol Complex
The Capitol Complex contains the Secretariat, High Court and Legislative Assembly, together with monuments including the Tower of Shadows, Open Hand, Martyrs’ Memorial and Geometric Hill.
THE ASSEMBLY — Why does a democratic institution need to look monumental?
THE HIGH COURT — How does architecture communicate justice and authority?
THE SECRETARIAT — What happens when an enormous building is designed around thousands of people working inside it?
THE OPEN HAND — Perhaps the most memorable symbol of Chandigarh is not a building at all. It is the Open Hand.
An open hand can give.
An open hand can receive.
It is not closed.
It does not hold on.
It remains open to exchange.
Modernism Meets India
Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh is fascinating precisely because it sits between worlds.
European modernism. Indian climate. Post-Independence optimism. Himalayan landscape. Democratic ambition. Traditional ways of living. Chandigarh was never a one-man story.
Le Corbusier gave the city its grand vision, but a wider group of architects, planners, engineers and Indian professionals turned that vision into a functioning city. Pierre Jeanneret, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry played major roles, particularly in residential and other parts of Chandigarh.
A Personal Reflection
After seeing modernist architecture again during my recent journey through Switzerland and Germany, I returned to Chandigarh with a slightly different eye.
I began noticing things that are easy to overlook when we approach Chandigarh simply as a collection of famous buildings.
The way the sun moves across concrete.
The enormous scale of the public spaces.
The relationship between shadow and shelter.
The deliberate movement of people.
The contrast between monumental architecture and the everyday life surrounding it.
And perhaps most importantly, the optimism behind it all.
Chandigarh was built at a moment when India was trying to imagine its future.
It was architecture with ambition.
The WalkAroundIndia Perspective
Today, Chandigarh is no longer simply the city that Le Corbusier imagined.
It has lived, changed, adapted and acquired its own identity.
People have made it their home.
Buildings have acquired memories.
Public spaces have developed lives of their own.
And the city continues to raise the questions that modernism asked almost a century ago.
Can architecture influence society?
Can a city express the aspirations of a nation?
And can an idea conceived on a drawing board become something genuinely alive?
Perhaps this is what makes Chandigarh worth walking through slowly.
Because once we stop looking at it simply as architecture, we begin to see something much larger: a young nation imagining its future in concrete, light, landscape and space.
And perhaps that is what Le Corbusier was really trying to tell India.
The future could be designed.
But, ultimately, it would have to be lived.
WALK CHANDIGARH WITH US
Explore Chandigarh not simply as a collection of modernist buildings, but as one of the world’s most fascinating experiments in architecture, urban planning and the making of modern India.
