City on the Plain

Deep, in India's Punjab, near the Himalayan foothills, a burning sun beat down last week on 30,000 sweating laborers. Women in bright saris poured concrete into wooden forms; long lines of men gouged out foundations, spread smoking tar on road surfaces with hands swathed in jute sacking. Bulldozers grunted and dusty trucks rumbled up with loads of hand-made brick. The name of the place was Chandigarh, and there last week the world's most modern city was rising from a desolate plain.

India's government chose Chandigarh in 1950 as the site for a new Punjab capital, and put aside 167 million rupees (about $35 million) for the project. To lay it out, they chose one of the world's best-known city planners: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, France's aging (65) stormy petrel of architecture. For the man who has spent his career energetically condemning the world's cities, it was the chance of a lifetime.

The Ville Verte. Le Corbusier envisions Chandigarh (pop. 150,000) as a magnificent ville verte (green city) -- 14 square miles of gardens and buildings, with a center complex of government buildings surrounded by 25 self-sufficient residential sectors. Each sector will have its own bazaar, clinic, nursery school, police station, bank, cinema and swimming pool, will include 128 houses built according to 13 different designs.

Even the cheapest of the houses are the stuff of Indian dreams. Made of clay brick and concrete slabs they are to cost only $620 apiece, have two rooms, a separate bathroom and lavatory, a porch, a courtyard garden and a separate kitchen with running water. To keep cool in summer and warm in winter, each house will have what Le Corbusier calls "sunbreakers" -- deeply recessed windows that will keep out the sun's hot rays when it is directly overhead, but will allow them to enter when the sun moves southward later in the year.

Architect Le Corbusier, who drives his 20-year-old Fiat at a nervous, bucking 15 m.p.h., treats traffic in Chandigarh like a dangerous beast. He has seven different types of roads criss-crossing his dream city like a waffle grid. There will be separate roads for children, for bicycles, pedestrians and cars. All fast, cross-city arteries are sunk 14 feet below ground level to hide the traffic and reduce noise, will have bridges for pedestrians to cross safely. Says Le Corbusier, peering happily through his thick spectacles: "The system will restore to the pedestrian the dignity and peace of mind of which the modern city has deprived him."

Eggs & Blocks. In Chandigarh's government complex, Le Corbusier shows off more of his latest architectural tricks. He plans a long, slablike Secretariat of nine stories, resting on thin, concrete columns and topped by an enormous, egg-shaped water-storage tank. Chandigarh will also have a High Court and an Assembly building, both under immense parasol roofs--huge, butterfly-shaped affairs supported by concrete columns, which will act as shields against the sun eight months of the year, umbrellas against monsoon rains for the other four.

Le Corbusier plans the governor's palace as a towering pile of concrete blocks. The base is a block 130 feet square, for official receptions; atop it is a smaller, two-story block for executive offices. Placed above both is the governor's residence, with a roof garden above it, sheltered by an enormous crescent of concrete. A short distance away, with the Himalayas as a background, Chandigarh will have its crowning edifice: a simple, saucer-shaped amphitheater with a huge, free-swinging mobile at one end cast in the shape of an open hand, a traditional Indian symbol of friendship and welcome.

Parks & Power Plants. In India last week, on his fifth inspection trip, Le Corbusier could see plenty of progress. In three years of work. 1,000 houses have "gone up across the dusty plain; another 2,000 are to be finished next winter. The main road system has been carved out, the parks are marked off and trees are being planted. The basement and first floor of the High Court are finished; work on the Secretariat is expected to begin next month. By 1956, says Le Corbusier, Chandigarh should be complete to the last detail.

When he thinks about his new concrete city, France's crusty old master grows almost lyrical. "We are making great things," he says. "Things with hand labor, without machines. Architecture abounds [in India]--it flows as the music flows in Bach." Most of India's architects are just as enthusiastic. Wrote the Punjab's Chief Engineer Parameshari Lal Varma, in a recent letter to Le Corbusier: "What you are giving to India I pray may become a source of new inspiration in our architecture and city planning."

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