Sculpture Park - nothing else like this in India - Part 2

Nek Chand, The Rock Garden, Chandigarh, Punjab.

With Partition, the capital city of Punjab, Lahore, went to Pakistan and Punjab needed a new capital. The government settled on Chandigarh. If it existed at all, it was only a town but was demolished in order to build a new modern capital. Chandigarh is a planned city. At least in part because of the pain that the region had suffered during Partition, Chandigarh was made a special project. The famous Swiss architect Le Corbusier designed the final city, though he was not the first architect on the job. The original team was American. Anyway, it was Le Corbusier's ideas which prevailed and if you know anything about his work, it is interesting to visit this city and see his ideas in the real. Wide boulevards built on a grid, strong geometric lines, an absence of flourish and ornamentation, efficiency, efficiency, efficiency; and cement as the favoured building material for a start. But as is the way in real life, other unplanned-for factors take over and India has stamped its identity all over the city - it's a grey and dusty city with signs of decay settling in right down to all the details. I went to hire a bike from the government tourist office and found I couldn't because all 10 of them were in a state of disrepair.

Consequent upon the demolition of the original town, a large supply of free building materials became available and Nek Chand began his illegal garden project. (see previous entry in wiki link for the story). His project was legitimised 1976 and funds were made available but later on a world trip, the funding was pulled and the garden was vandalised. Today you can see signs of the rot setting in. Nek Chand is an old man in his 80s and it is highly likely that when he dies, his park will fall into ruins.

I think Le Corbusier would have approved of the radical artist who was playing with modernist artistic ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandigarh