In this episode we will talk about how the Chandigarh Capital Project team was selected. When did Corbusier and Jeanneret enter the picture and how was the rest of the team assembled? Who were the people displaced by Chandigarh and where did the labourers involved in the city's construction come from? We will also discuss the team's heirarchy and how the work was divided amongst them.   TIMESTAMPS:   1:07 - How and when did Le Corbusier become a part of the team?   3:23 - Was the idea of a competition ever floated to select the architects?   5:03 - How did Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry enter the project, following their African experience?   7:34 - Corbusier’s terms and conditions for joining the Chandigarh project   8:36 - The deal: Jeanneret to be in Chandigarh on behalf of Corbusier   12:24 - Corbusier’s preference to work from home   14:55 - CIAM’s role in globalising modernist architecture   17:46 - The false East-West dichotomy in Chandigarh’s discourse   19:51 - Criteria for selecting the younger architects   22:58 - Chandimandir rest house office as described by Mulk Raj Anand; how Corbusier ‘shrunk’ the Mayer plan.   27:30 - Land surveying and road laying by the engineers before shifting the office to Chandigarh   28:33 - The first building in Chandigarh - Capital Project Office in Nagla (Sector-19)   28:53 - The first houses came up in sector 22 to house the architects and engineers   30:28 - Labourers showed up in Chandigarh… from where? Were they trained on-site?   31:11 - The untold stories of the people and villages displaced to make way for Chandigarh   35:26 - The first ‘inhabitants’ of Chandigarh   36:17 - Corbusier fascinated by Indians carrying their beds on their heads!   37:00 - Jeanneret’s design for the Sector-19  Planners’ Office   38:46 - How the junior architects joined the team   39:44 - How was the work divided amongst the architects?   41:51 - The order of constructing the institutional buildings   42:57 - The conflict between white painted plaster and exposed bricks      

In our first episode, join us as we explore the origins of the modernist city of Chandigarh, with Dr. Vikramāditya Prakāsh. How did the partition of India and Pakistan lead to its creation? Who were the idealized inhabitants of this utopian city? How was the site selected? What was the Garden City movement, how does it relate to Nehruvian modernism?     TIMESTAMPS: 1:07 - Why Chandigarh? The need for a new capital city of Punjab in post partition India. 5:24 - Nehru, modernist and industrialisation;  modernism architecture as a global movement    9:42 - British Colonialism and western industrialisation; transfer of wealth. 12:07 - Albert Mayer and Gandhi, Lewis Mumford and Mathew Nowicki. 15:12 - Partition and migration; utopian aspirations of the newly independent India; Chandigarh - imagined capital of Nehruvian India. 19:25 - Inventing a new, ideal citizen of the nation state; the imagined inhabitants of Chandigarh. 22:38 - AL Fletcher, the brief for Chandigarh. Ebenezer Howard and the new town movement; the “Garden City” movement 26:00 - The Mayer plan; site selection by PL Varma and PN Thapar by helicopter“ 28:26 -  Land acquisition by “eminent domain”; displacement and relocation; the first buildings; architect’s office 32:32 - The search for Nowicki’s replacement; hiring Le Corbusier.   Hosted & Produced by Eashan Chaufla [email protected]