Nek Chand's Rock Garden and Le Corbusier in Chandigarh: reconsidering the primitive Iain Jackson Liverpool School of Architecture, UK, Email:
[email protected] Soumyen Bandyopadhyay Liverpool School of Architecture, UK, Email:
[email protected] This paper is concerned with two personalities, Le Corbusier and Nek Chand, occupying, as it would appear, the extreme polarities of the creative spectrum, yet sharing the same geographic space of artistic production. Following India's independence in 1947, and the untimely death of Matthew Nowicki that marked the demise of the Mayer-Nowicki plan, Le Corbusier was invited by the first Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru to design Chandigarh, a city which was to act as the new capital city of the partitioned state of Punjab. Nek Chand - a self-taught sculptor - who began life as a road inspector in Chandigarh at a time when the city was being built, constructed the Rock Garden in Chandigarh - initially illegally and as a private hobby - out of found natural rocks and the fragmented remains of the villages that once occupied the site of Chandigarh. The Garden set within 18 acres of modified landscape and ceramic-clad terrain, exists at the edge of Chandigarh's Capitol Complex and consists of over 3000 sculptures and architectural follies. It was discovered in 1972 and eventually legalised in 1976. The garden is still under development and continues to receive around 2000 visitors each day. In spite of their widely differing backgrounds - Le Corbusier, already a world renowned architect, well-travelled and widely read, and Nek Chand, a migrant from what is now the Pakistani part of Punjab, a road inspector and a self-taught sculptor of limited education and experience - the Capitol Complex and the Rock Garden share a common ground of aesthetics.