[HN Gopher] What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design ...
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What Le Corbusier got wrong and right in his design of Chandigarh
Author : efface
Score : 93 points
Date : 2022-03-25 03:42 UTC (19 hours ago)
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| denton-scratch wrote:
| First a cookie popup with only an "Accept" button (that isn't
| auto-clicked by Super Agent); then a demand for payment that
| can't be dismissed, and blocks the article.
|
| Please don't post paywalled articles.
| ratherlongname wrote:
| For me there's a cross to close the donation dialog box (top-
| right).
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Install uBlock Origin.
| the_common_man wrote:
| Great read. I wonder the author will think of bay area suburbia
| and in general american suburbs. It's depressingly same story -
| vast for no reason, designed for cars, just vast emptiness for no
| real reason, climate unfriendly
| lbriner wrote:
| I immediately find myself asking whether the mistake is to allow
| one person to govern so much of a design of something so large
| and multi-purpose as a city.
|
| Many places where people complain of a failed designed city are
| complaining about its uniformity, whereas most places that people
| rate highly will have an enormous range of styles, sizes, ages
| and even geometry.
|
| It seems like a more useful design would need to be organic. You
| could have an open competition for people to simulate how a real
| town would have grown over time taking into account what happened
| in that part of the world (famines, wars etc.) to end up with
| something that could look much more varied and interesting but
| which could be built to modern standards of efficiency and also
| can design things like roads and services more sustainably,
| instead of creating something that cannot be maintained for
| reasonable money (digging up roads all the time, tarmac etc.)
| pratik661 wrote:
| Imagine the beauty of Boston city hall, but spread across the
| whole city..
| lengxzai wrote:
| This article misses the mark in so so many ways. Chandigarh is
| pretty much the only livable city in the country!
|
| - "unnecessarily large scale" is the reason that it is the only
| city in India that doesn't suffocate it's own residents
|
| - wide avenues, open spaces and numerous public parks encourage
| families to step out of their residential sectors often. Walk
| into any park after 4pm during the week, and you will see
| children and adults of all ages exercising/ playing sports
|
| - It is also one of the few places where the bureaucracy has
| enforced strict building codes to prevent the kind of
| construction creep you see in large tier 1 metropolitan centers
| thesaintlives wrote:
| Thanks for the great post. I had no idea Le Corbusier was
| involved in the design of some Indian cities. I lived in New
| Delhi for a while and traveled around a bit. This makes total
| sense now. There is some really abstract architecture and grand
| spaces to be seen. Now I understand the influence. Thank you!
| thematrixturtle wrote:
| I think Chandigarh is the only one he was involved in. "New
| Delhi", as in the British Imperial capital built next to old
| Delhi, was largely Edwin Lutyens' creation and predates
| modernism.
| baybal2 wrote:
| There are a lot of planned cities in India, and Pakistan.
|
| Few know, but Islamabad is also began its existence as a 100%
| planned city. Pakistan invited C. A. Doxiadis to do the
| planning
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinos_Apostolou_Doxiadi...
| . He was considered to be of Corbusier's calibre if not more,
| at the time.
|
| Faisalabad was planned back in British time. And the now
| infamous Model Town, as the name suggests, too.
|
| Dhaka, and Karachi were also supposed to get plans at around
| late sixties, but we all know how it went...
|
| Diodiaxis left Karachi plan half finished when 1971 happened,
| and Dhaka had an initial burst of orderly development for a few
| years, but it was cut short after Mujib was murdered, and 20
| years of instability followed.
|
| Karachi, and Dhaka now are prime examples of "urban hells" in
| the world.
| andybak wrote:
| Chandigarh is pretty unique in this regard. Someone else can
| correct me if I'm wrong but I think it's the only city where a
| single modernist architect was allowed mostly unfettered
| control.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Brazilia in Brazil was the same thing with Niemeyer. But not
| sure how much of the actual city he did, or just the most
| iconic buildings.
|
| ps. see comment below, it was the work of multiple architects
| evandrofisico wrote:
| Brasilia was the work of multiple architects, Lucio Costa
| was the main urban planner, while Oscar Niemeyer designed
| the most important government buildings.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Fair enough! I did not know indeed the extent of
| Niemeyer's power over the city plan, I only knew about
| the iconic buildings.
| prionassembly wrote:
| I used to go to Brasilia 3-4 times a month for work. If you
| got on a Tuesday morning flight you could rub shoulders
| with congressmen, top-level cabinet ministers, supreme
| court justices and so on. Many would easily engage you in
| conversation, too; maybe because I didn't open with
| political subjects and mainly complained about having to go
| to Brasilia.
|
| The first problem with Brasilia is that it's horribly
| located. We did avoid the Stockholm fate of having our
| historical cities razed, but moved the seat of power to the
| middle of nowhere. I know that overpaid lower-ranking
| bureaucrats have houses in the outer rings, near the lakes;
| but no one who has an actual choice lives in Brasilia. I
| don't know if it fully qualifies as a city. If the capital
| ever moves, it will be a ghost town in three weeks and
| start crumbling (bad architecture and bad construction)
| within the year.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| If you ever find yourself in or near Albany, New York
| it's worth looking at the state government complex and
| university to compare and contrast.
|
| The capitol complex really settles the arguments. You
| have the NYS Capitol, which is an amazing expression of
| the excess of 19th century monumental building. Across
| one street is a circa 1910 replica of a Greek temple
| turned office building, with a gross 1950s addition in
| the rear. Across the park is an Art Deco mid rise, and
| then you have the Empire State Plaza, which is an
| interpretation of Brasilia in the US.
|
| It's designed as an over proportioned Roman forum built
| on a parking garage and mall-like concourse, but the
| buildings themselves are bizarre. Full of little warrens,
| and dependent on chaulk and constant maintenance to
| endure.
|
| The architects sold the place based on the modernist
| form, but the building interiors are really not designed
| for their intended use. Function always follows form in
| these sorts of buildings.
| rayiner wrote:
| I took my bar admission oath in Albany. The NYS Capitol
| is so beautiful. Then I came across Empire State Plaza
| and thought I had entered some Star War set.
| cassepipe wrote:
| A good example of why we shouldn't give anyone unfettered
| control (with something that impact the lives of millions)
| carlsborg wrote:
| I have visited this city. These photos and this story do not do
| it justice. There are multiple beautiful parks in every sector, a
| massive jogging park, a man made lake, for example.
| lqet wrote:
| Le Corbusier is a mystery to me. I would very much like to
| understand the intellectual bending of his esthetic instincts
| that lead him going from this [0, 1, 2] to this [3, 4, 5] and his
| ideas of "machines for living" [6]. With good intentions, he
| invented the modern ghetto.
|
| [0]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Maison_b...
|
| [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a6/CF05.jpg
|
| [2]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3c/VillaSavoye.j...
|
| [3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-
| Marie_de_la_Tourette#/m...
|
| [4]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Corbusie...
|
| [5]
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Ch...
|
| [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit%C3%A9_d%27habitation
| nkoren wrote:
| I can't find any online searchable text of his great polemic,
| "Towards a New Architecture" -- but basically if you read that
| it's pretty clear: he hated people. Individual humans are fine
| and should have their needs efficiently catered to, but humans,
| en masse, are a repugnant horror that need to be cleaned up.
|
| From memory, he described the cafes and bars of Paris as
| "fungus which consumes the pavement". He wanted to raze Paris
| to the ground in order to sort that out.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Voisin). There was one line
| in particular -- I wish I could find the exact text, but it
| went something like this: "the modern phonograph or victrola
| can perfectly reproduce the sounds of the orchestra, so there
| is no more need for the modern man to expose himself to the
| germs of the audience of the virtuoso of the soloist."
|
| (I threw that book across the room SO many times during
| architecture school.)
|
| In short: at one scale Corbusier may have had a fine sense of
| aesthetics and a generally keen mind, but at social scales he
| was a sociopathic germophobe who absolutely abhorred the
| complexity of organic living systems.
| rospaya wrote:
| It's borderline ignorant to call Unite buildings ghettos,
| especially if you're judging them only by looks. I've been in
| several of them in the article and loved it, in some places
| they're coveted places to live - if they've been maintained and
| supported with surrounding infrastructure.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I think Sainte-Marie in cleaner form[1] rather than in the
| unflattering state of that wiki picture and the Chandigarh
| Secretariat look great.
|
| [1]https://lecorbusier-worldheritage.org/wp-content/webpc-
| passt...
| mynameishere wrote:
| He put an intellectual veneer on cheap trash. This can lead to
| lasting fame in many fields
| martneumann wrote:
| The first few are single family villas, the last four are multi
| family housing complexes.
|
| For some reason, people in Europe back in the 60s believed that
| creating dense housing only units with no sense of scale, long
| commutes and walks and 100% car dependence was the way forward.
|
| That experiment backfired almost everywhere. Some of these
| homes, both in Eastern and Western Europe are well connected
| via public transport, integrate commercial and residential
| zones and are fairly nice to live in. Most, however, are simply
| unhealthy for both the planet and the residents.
|
| It's great to live in dense places; but its benefits are
| countered by huge, empty plazas that take 15 minutes to cross
| if I just want to walk to the next corner store.
| p_l wrote:
| You're missing how some of those places were built with, or
| without, the necessary secondary support architecture that
| was specified in the original ideas.
|
| For example, Communist-era housing blocks in Poland had
| standardised requirements for availability of grocery shops,
| healthcare, transportation, sport and recreation areas, etc.
| for each community built this way, and generally you never
| had to walk far to get to a grocery store in my experience.
| What was problematic is that due to worse processes at the
| time, it took years for green areas to get, well, green.
|
| Corbusier and many places inspired by him seemed to have put
| the requirements, but often for various reasons those were
| stripped out - either due to subpar followers, or costs, or
| even outright malfeasance (one place I lived in had the
| design changed by builders while architects were on vacation,
| resulting in much maligned building)
| kergonath wrote:
| > For some reason, people in Europe back in the 60s believed
| that creating dense housing only units with no sense of
| scale, long commutes and walks and 100% car dependence was
| the way forward.
|
| To be fair, there were pressing issues with large slums all
| across Europe at that time, and they needed to build _lots_
| of homes very quickly. I am not sure there were many
| alternative to blocks of flats back in the day. The problem
| is also not really high densities, because it also means that
| there is a local market for shops, restaurants, etc, which
| can make the neighbourhoods very walkable and nice. Most
| large projects had plans for things like cinemas, swimming
| pools, gyms, shops, and stuff. Often these were not built and
| instead there were these rows after rows of blocks of
| concrete.
|
| Transport is a real problem, because these places became less
| and less attractive as they aged and became more and more
| isolated.
|
| But smaller population densities would not have helped one
| bit with that. It would just have encouraged urban sprawl
| which is even worse in terms of public transport and
| walkability.
| johnyzee wrote:
| > For some reason, people in Europe back in the 60s believed
| that creating dense housing only units with no sense of
| scale, long commutes and walks and 100% car dependence was
| the way forward.
|
| I saw a documentary about one of these projects. It was
| contemporary footage with interviews of regular people,
| asking what they thought about them. A woman gave an answer
| which I felt was very profound: "Who wants to live where you
| can't see your kids when they're playing outside?"
|
| It just seems so jarringly obvious, how disconnected it is to
| sit up in a tower block, coming from someone who is probably
| used to be able to open the front door and be outside. Also
| it struck me how these areas are always associated in my mind
| with delinquency (having grown up around them). Perhaps it's
| just because the parents can't see their kids, duh.
| throwaway599281 wrote:
| Le Corbusier's legacy and its consequences have been a disaster
| for the human race.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I remember Chandigarh as refreshingly quiet compared to many
| other Indian cities. And easy to get around. It's a nice weekend
| getaway from Delhi. The rock garden is a fascinating place to
| explore there.
| rahulnair23 wrote:
| Yes, Corbusier's vision of cities was tied to speed, and by
| consequence, to cars.
|
| But Chandigarh today has fantastic segregated bike
| infrastructure! No other Indian city comes close. The city itself
| is pan-flat and relatively small (shaped as a rectangle where the
| longer side is 10 kilometers).
|
| Cycle the routes and you see the vast array of tradesman,
| workers, maids, and vegetable vendors travel by cycle. Big
| apartment complexes will have bike stands full of pink bicycles
| that the maids would use.
|
| Granted the city has far too many cars, but the article doesn't
| adequately reflect the town and all its people.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Man, I recall in good old 2008, arriving into Chandigarh after
| almost month of backpacking in rest of India. What a shock it
| was! Straight roads in mesh, traffic lights everywhere. It
| looked and felt so surreal, detached from rest of Indian
| subcontinent which felt to me to be in some very distant
| parallel universe.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| I was there in 2006, but I started my journey recovering from
| jet lag there, and I kept thinking "this seems very different
| from what I expected India to be like". My traveling
| companion explained it _is_ in fact completely different from
| most of India (and so I found in the rest of my visit).
| entropyie wrote:
| We can't have a discussion of Le Corbusier and modernism with
| mentioning the concept of "legibility" as illuminated here:
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...
|
| Relevant quote: " High-modernist (think Bauhaus and Le Corbusier)
| aesthetics necessarily lead to simplification, since a reality
| that serves many purposes presents itself as illegible to a
| vision informed by a singular purpose. Any elements that are non-
| functional with respect to the singular purpose tend to confuse,
| and are therefore eliminated during the attempt to "rationalize."
| "
|
| I stayed in one of Le Corbusier's buildings in Marseilles (now a
| hotel) and loved it, but his treatment of neighbourhoods seems to
| ignore human nature/scale to our detriment.
| jabl wrote:
| I've watched many architecture TV programs presenting works of
| Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus school, and other examples of
| modernism. And often I've walked away with a "Wow" feeling,
| there is in some sense a kind of majestic beauty in it.
|
| But OTOH I'm thinking that actually living in an environment
| like that would get, well, quite boring after a while. Lacking
| all the small ornaments and other minor details that you notice
| when you're there day in an out. It might look cluttered and
| disorganized in a glossy architecture magazine, but, well, I
| guess people actually living there might well prefer it that
| way.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| The Soviet-style farms of boring apartments blocks are
| basically Le Corbusier's vision on a budget - and yep, it
| does get boring in there.
| dmitriid wrote:
| As I saw someone say, "In all its years modernism has failed to
| produce _beautiful_ cities ".
|
| Tourists still flock to old parts of towns and 19th-century
| _factories_ are refurbished into elite apartments.
| kergonath wrote:
| The 19th-century warehouses that are so trendy these days were
| abominations back in the day. I think it's very difficult to
| predict with any king of accuracy what people will like 100
| years from now.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Modernism has been around for almost 100 years already. "Le
| Coubousier's Toward an Architecture" is 1920-1923.
| ___rubidium___ wrote:
| I'm currently reading _Suburban Nation_ by Duany et al, and
| they talk about this exact thing - how the most desirable
| neighborhoods in old US cities like Boston or Washington are
| the old, dense, mixed-use parts of town. The book is twenty
| years old but it is still a good introduction to some of the
| problems of American-style suburbia.
| rockyj wrote:
| At-least Chandigarh was "planned" with a vision or an idea. Ask
| anyone in India who has lived in or visited Chandigarh and they
| will speak of it highly. Most other big cities / state capitals
| in India are not that pleasant to live in and are just built or
| expanded as per "demand".
| adictator wrote:
| cassepipe wrote:
| He also had a plan to destroy a bunch of Paris to make it car-
| centered and more "modern". Be open to innovations but beware of
| modernists.
| acadapter wrote:
| This type of destruction happened in parts of Stockholm, with
| the historic Klara neighbourhood being destroyed and replaced
| by roads and modernist/brutalist architecture.
|
| It was apparently very difficult for people to speak up during
| the forced reloactions and demolishing, but in hindsight it's
| viewed a destructive act. Too late.
|
| It's not like there wasn't any room for architectural
| experiments. Many suburbs were built at that time on empty land
| (with both good and bad results).
| rags2riches wrote:
| Le Corbusier actually made plans for Stockholm as well. They
| were even worse. The whole Old Town of Stockholm as well as
| great parts of Norrmalm and Sodermalm would have been lost.
| The raisinf of the old Klara and the related "modernization"
| was bad, but it could have been much, much worse if Le
| Corbusier had had his way.
| gumby wrote:
| I agree with you, but to be fair this very practice is what
| gave us the Paris so many people love. It just wasn't Le
| Courbusier but Haussmann.
| keiferski wrote:
| The areas of Paris which are most popular amongst locals
| today are in the East and Northeast, most of which weren't
| affected by Hausmann's reforms.
| namdnay wrote:
| Yes, because the Hausmannian places are too expensive, due
| to their global popularity :)
| arlort wrote:
| Not just Paris, cities are built on the corpses of their past
| selves. Go back enough in the life of any major building in
| an historical city and you're likely to find someone who
| thought it was an abomination that should never have replaced
| a lovely piece of architecture
|
| This is not to say that new is always better, to be clear,
| but cities are living things, sometimes I'm worried we're
| trying too hard to preserve everything for the future
| nerdponx wrote:
| Robert Moses famously did this to New York. The city continues
| to suffer under his legacy.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's fashionable to say that. Yet I think NYC would be worse
| off had he not been around.
|
| Moses was a complex man and he did stuff good and bad. The
| unique thing about Moses is that he was an incredibly
| talented individual, both genius and villain. His
| acquisition, wielding, and addiction to power is fascinating.
|
| The other thing is that he attracted the attention of the
| greatest biographer of the modern era. His legacy is
| documented in depth while the people who destroyed Baltimore,
| Cincinnati, Syracuse, etc get the benefit of anonymity.
|
| Caro boiled it down to one idea: "Moses loved the public but
| hated people."
| nerdponx wrote:
| Fair about anonymity, and fair about his talent. But I
| can't forgive him for what he did to the Rockaways, as much
| as I can't forgive whoever designed the Inner Loop highway
| in Rochester. The fact that I know one's name and not the
| other doesn't change my dislike of what they did.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| If you haven't, it sounds like this is a topic you're
| into and i would recommend that you read "The Power
| Broker". It's a summer read (as in June-September), but
| is a uniquely awesome book.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's next up after the Hamilton biography :)
| matbatt38 wrote:
| Am I the only one surprised with the suggested amounts for the
| donation ? (atm: 50/100/200$)
| Pxtl wrote:
| Wonderful article - I had no idea that Le Corbusier was involved
| in "modernizing" an Indian city.
|
| But I feel like some maps and aerial views and wider shots
| would've illustrated some of the higher-level discussions for a
| Westerner like me.
|
| I kept craving more visuals to correspond to what the author was
| talking about. Often the phots they did provide contrasted quite
| strongly with the descriptions - like when discussing the upper-
| class Sector 23 and the more cosmopolitan Sector 17 (these names
| are almost cartoonishly dystopian) the photos seem to be almost
| reversed, since the Sector 23 photo looks much more run-down
| contrasted against the open and polished plaza shown of Sector
| 17.
| ___rubidium___ wrote:
| I looked at the city on Google maps; the street grid is
| prominent but I didn't feel like I good a good idea of how the
| city is laid out into sectors as the article mentioned. One
| thing I did notice were some blocks of the city that did not
| conform to the overall grid (there's a prominent one in the
| southwest of the central city). Does anyone know if these were
| instances of post-Corbusier demolition and rebuilding, or were
| these part of the original plan? It would be interesting to
| know how much the city has changed sense it was designed and
| built (in the 60s I guess?).
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(page generated 2022-03-25 23:02 UTC)