History of Chandigarh

The city was commissioned by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, to reflect the new nation’s modern, progressive outlook. Nehru famously proclaimed Chandigarh to be “unfettered by the traditions of the past, a symbol of the nation’s faith in the future.”

Several buildings in Chandigarh were designed by the Swiss-born French architect and planner, Le Corbusier in the 1950s. Le Corbusier was in fact the second architect of the city, after the initial master plan was prepared by the American architect-planner Albert Mayer who was working with the Polish-born architect Matthew Nowicki. It was only after Nowicki’s untimely death in 1950 that Le Corbusier was pulled into the project.

Plan and Architecture

Taking over from Albert Mayer, Le Corbusier produced a plan for Chandigarh that conformed to the modern city planning principles of CIAM,in terms of division of urban functions, an anthropomorphic plan form, and a hierarchy of road and pedestrian networks.

The intial plan had two phases: the first for a population of 150,000 and the second taking the total population to 500,000. Le Corbusier divided the city into units called ’sectors’, each representing a theoretically self-sufficient entity with space for living, working and leisure.

The sectors were linked to each other by a road and path network developed along the line of the 7 Vs, or a hierarchy of seven types of circulation patterns. At the highest point in this network was the V1, the highways connecting the city to others, and at the lowest were the V7s, the streets leading to individual houses. Later a V8 was added: cycle and pedestrian paths.

The city plan is laid down in a grid pattern. Divided into identical looking sectors, each sector measures 800m x 1200m. The sectors were to act as self-sufficient neighborhoods, each with its own market, places of worship, schools and colleges - all within 10 minutes walking distance from within the sector. The original two phases of the plan delineated sectors from 1 to 47, with the exception of 13.