Jeanneret in Chandigarh
A NATION’S FAITH IN THE FUTURE
“In Chandigarh, Pierre Jeanneret had the thankless task of supervising, step by step, the creation of the new capital city, of sticking to the plans and carrying them through when the path was difficult and strewn with obstacles. I am very appreciative of it and I owe him a huge debt of gratitude.” - Le Corbusier
After the chaos and bloodshed of the partition of India in 1947, the former British province of Punjab lost its capital, Lahore, to Pakistan, requiring a replacement. Named for Chandi, Hindu goddess of power, the city of Chandigarh was conceived by Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, who grasped for grand projects to express what he called “the nation’s faith in the future”. In his 1947 speech, “Tryst With Destiny,” delivered on the eve of India’s Independence from the United Kingdom, Nehru said, “A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new.” Visiting Chandigarh in 1952, Nehru said it should “be a new town, symbolic of the freedom of India, unfettered by the traditions of the past” - a means of achieving a new visible identity, after centuries of colonial subjugation. Nehru was determined that the city should project an image of modernity and progress, a mandate which was put to the American architect Albert Mayer (1897-1981), who contracted the Polish-born American architect Matthew Nowicki (1910-1950). The pair developed a plan based on the Garden City model, but tragedy struck soon after when Nowicki was killed in a plane crash near Cairo in August 1950. Mayer, shaken by the death of his partner, immediately withdrew from the project.
Bereft of a design team, the two officials in charge of the Chandigarh project, a planner-cum-administrator, P.N. Thapar, and engineer, P.L. Verma, journeyed to Europe, armed with a list of architects, including Berthold Lubetkin, Peter Shepheard and F. R. S Yorke. They were referred by a French minister to the renowned modernist architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, known as Le Corbusier, who, not keen to take on the assignment, dismissed them from his office at 35 rue de Sèvres in Paris in November 1950. Thapar and Verma then approached the London based husband and wife team of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew. Fry and Drew had been working in Africa at that time in climates similar to those of North India and specialised in what they called “Tropical Architecture”. They were excited by the prospect of designing housing and other civic buildings, but were reluctant to accept what was on offer. A condition of the Chandigarh project was to reside in India for at least three years which contradicted Fry’s preferred model of setting up a remote office that could be managed from London. Drew, on the other hand, was enthusiastic, and following a “sit in” by Varma and Thapar, she suggested they ask Le Corbusier. The two Indian officials were understandably skeptical, after all, Le Corbusier had already turned them down once; but Drew suggested they accompany her to Paris so as to persuade him to reconsider. Le Corbusier agreed, but only on the grounds that his younger cousin and long-time colaborator, Pierre Jeanneret, be hired as the site architect. According to the Indian architect Achyut Kavinde “Le Corbusier would not have accepted the commission to design the capital of Punjab without the initiative and interest of [Fry and Drew].” Fry and Drew agreed to work on the housing; Le Corbusier would be in charge of further developing and detailing the preliminary plan. For Corbusier it was the perfect coda to his life; the chance to create an entire city based on an urban design philosophy and ideas he had developed throughout his career.
Interior view of Pierre Jeaneret’s house. Lucien Herve 1955. Image from Touchaleaume and Moreau
Pierre Jeanneret table (c. 1950) Image from Touchaleaume and Moreau
Le Corbusier and Jeannaret shared a progressive architectural philosophy that integrated design into everyday living; they thought it important that the furniture for Chandigarh should reflect that philosophy. Jeanneret designed unique site-specific furniture for many of the city’s most iconic buildings, using inexpensive, insect-and humidity-resistant locally-sourced teak. “There were no furniture shops, no carpet shops, so the architects designed their own,” said M.N. Sharma, an architect who worked closely with Le Corbusier. “The furniture Jeanneret designed is naturally in the same spirit as the city, in the same school of thought.” Jeannret’s designs, simple yet driven by a refined aesthetic, were executed by local artisans, thereby integrating Corbusian modernity with the rural spirit of Indian tradition. Jeanneret proved particularly skilled at connecting with the local community: “Effectively, he is respected like a father, liked as a brother by the fifty or so young men who have applied to work in the Architect’s Office,” wrote Le Corbusier in praise of his cousin. Simple designs and the use of modest materials meant Jeanneret’s designs could be produced en masse; using exclusively “X” “U” and “V” compositions (the latter developed in the earlier Scissor chairs, designed for Knoll, Inc.), the “Library Table” and “Kangaroo Chairs”, for example, share an instantly recognizable geometric language. Combining strong minimal forms and simple materials, such as bamboo, rope and cotton, Jeanneret created a body of work celebrated not only as a unique modernist legacy, but as one of distinctive Indian heritage. At Chandigarh Jeanneret expanded the boundaries of 20th century design, moving it beyond the elite and improving peoples lives through innovation. The pinnacle of his work as an architect and designer, the project affected Jeanneret profoundly; he remained in Chandigarh after the city’s construction was complete, rarely returning to Europe.
Jeanneret armchair, bamboo with cotton webbed seat and cord back (c. 1956). Image from Touchaleaume and Moreau
Upon his death in 1967, as per his last wish, Jeanneret's ashes were scattered in Chandigarh’s Sukhna Lake. Before he passed, he explained candidly what the Chandigarh project had meant to him, both personally and professionally: “The working methods that I discovered in India finally taught me self-esteem after so many failures in France. Chandigarh was for both of us a kind of glade in the human jungle. Le Corbusier’s works brought us up against nearly unsurmountable execution problems in terms of the technical and ethnic considerations of the country. I’ve thought long and hard. […] Finally, when all is said and done, I’m sure that Le Corbusier was right — subsistence solutions are not solutions for fighting for a state of civilization.” (Touchaleaume and Moreau 49).
By the late 1980s the city of Chandigarh had already begun to deteriorate. Much of Jeanneret's furniture had succumbed to heavy use, high temperatures, and extreme humidity. As it fell into disrepair, it was put into storage, sold as scrap at local auctions, or left out in the elements to rot. Jeanneret chairs piled up across the city, from the roof of the High Court to the balconies of administrative buildings. “No-one knew what to do with this scrapped furniture and the scrap dealers, carpenters and other small businesses were buying them for a few rupees to recover the wood for other productions … or they ended up as fuel for heating and cooking. […] Nobody had the slightest interest in this furniture and huge quantities had been destroyed in this manner” (Touchaleaume and Moreau 13). In the early 2000’s, dealers Eric Touchaleaume, Philippe Jousse, François Laffanour and Patrick Seguin began making trips to Chandigarh to snap up these discarded treasures. “We said, Let’s take the risk of buying these, and we’ll see what happens,” recalls Laffanour, whose Galerie Downtown specialises in 20th-century furniture.
Pierre Jeanneret at home in Chandigrah, sitting in one of his bamboo armchairs. Lucien Herve 1955, Touchaleaume and Moreau
Since its rediscovery, the V-leg chair has become a favorite of Belgian designer Axel Vervoordt and French architect Joseph Dirand. “It’s so simple, so minimal, so strong,” Dirand told Architectural Digest. “Put one in a room, and it becomes a sculpture.” Much of Touchaleaume’s collection was sold at Christie’s in 2007: a manhole cover, designed by Jeanneret, molded with the map of Chandigarh, sold for $21,600, alongside stools, armchairs, and even desks from the city’s library. The scale of the loss of furniture and fittings from buildings including the high court and college of architecture has become so serious that the city’s authorities have ordered that no more furniture be auctioned.
Rajnish Wattas, who in 2008 founded Chandigarh’s Heritage Furniture Committee, told The New York Times, “It is a tragic misunderstanding, I wish the scandal had come out earlier and then maybe we could have clung on to much more than we have now.” Amid claims city officials may be passing off items as privately-owned furniture, frustration is growing at the failure at attempts to draw up a list of the furniture still remaining. Professor Kiran Joshi, a former lecturer at Chandigarh College of Architecture, who was tasked with drawing up a catalogue, said “It’s not the collectors that were the problem. The problem is our perception of heritage. We thought it was junk; our government thought it was junk.”
Ben Weaver
Interior view of Pierre Jeaneret’s house. Lucien Herve 1955, Touchaleaume and Moreau
Interior view of Pierre Jeaneret’s house, carefully decoarated by himself with “ethnic” style furniture he manufactured or ordered from local craftspeople. Lucien Herve 1955, Touchaleaume and Moreau