Jeanneret Chandigarh

"The City of Chandigarh puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach." - Le Corbusier Upon India's independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, its first Prime Minister, dreamed of "a new town, an expression of the nation's faith in the future." The incarnation of Nehru's vision, the city of Chandigarh was the brainchild of renowned modernist architect Le Corbusier, born of his utopian dream of an avant-garde city, and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, who oversaw production of thousands of objects that furnished it. Recently, record prices at auction for these pieces have brought awareness of this great project and its creators to a broader public. This catalogue raisonne sheds new light on this visionary urban project that is generating growing interest among design aficionados around the world. 400 illustrations

Illustrated with photographs dating from the time period to the present, this book documents the architectural project and the production of the furniture, offering a definitive summary of this epic modernist enterprise. A further chapter is dedicated to the work of Lucien Hervé, the famous architectural photographer who depicted the city extensively. The architect, urban planner, painter, writer, designer and theorist Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was born in Switzerland in 1887. In 1922 Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret opened an architectural studio in Paris, inaugurating a partnership that would last until 1940. They began experimenting with furniture design after inviting the architect Charlotte Perriand to join the studio in 1928. After World War II, they sought efficient ways to house large numbers of people in response to the urban housing crisis.

Chandigarh, built in the 1950s to a scheme by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret with their team of international and Indian architects, until the present day is regarded an icon of modernist urban design. Austrian artist Werner Feiersinger has recently travelled to the legendary capital of India s federal state Punjab. Inspired by Ernst Scheidegger s book "Chandigarh 1956"," " he has put together a vast pictorial account of the city s famous architecture today. This new book features some 300 of Feiersinger s photographs. With the artist s view and based on his own creative experience as a sculptor, he shows the expressive sculptural qualities of the buildings. He captures the place s vivid atmosphere and virtuosity and illustrates its continuous topicality. This artistic approach clearly distinguishes this book from previous publications on Chandigarh, most of which are of merely documentary character. The essay by Austrian architect Andreas Vass reflects on Chandigarh s history, its architectural qualities, and its future development. The title "Chandigarh Redux "refers to Francis Ford Coppola s Apocalypse Now Redux, the 2001 extended version of his epic war film of 1979. "

Conceived soon after Independence, Chandigarh, the new capital for India''s Punjab province, has become a landmark of modernism and an unusual experiment in comprehensive civic design. This book records the various built elements of the city.'

This richly illustrated volume invites us to think afresh about urban life and the modern city by offering images and analyses of two very different but complementary contemporary cities: the planned Indian city of Chandigarh and the ancient metropolis of Casablanca--the ancient North African harbor town developed into a modern metropolis by Michel Ecochard and a team of young French and Moroccan architects after World War II. Countering the dominant view of modern urbanism that values avant-garde ideas originating in the West over developments in non-Western regions, the book offers a more nuanced approach to the history of the modern city, and to the relationship between local knowledge and imported ideas in the rapid globalization that followed World War II. Ultimately, by focusing on the design and inhabitation of the cities' public spaces and housing, the book locates the essence of the modern city in its ordinary fabric and everyday life--which shifts our understanding of architecture and planning, enabling us to see it as a collective work that is necessarily the result of negotiation among a variety of actors. Chandigarh Casablanca is published to coincide with an exhibition at the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal.

A unique document of architectural photography and the concepts of visual communication of architecture and urban planning.

This analysis of the principles underlying Le Corbusier’s œuvre shows his work in an entirely new light, enhanced by previously unpublished drawings and photographs.