Lot 537
  • 537

Le Corbusier

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Description

  • Le Corbusier
  • ''Wheat Sheaf'' Mold for the Capital Complex Buildings, Chandigarh
  • teak

Provenance

Giani Rattan Singh

Literature

Piergiorgio Sclarandis, Chandigarh:  Le Corbusier in India, Milan, n.d., p. 43 (for the wheat sheaf symbol in the entrance ramp to the parliament building, Chandigarh)
Mogens Krustrup, Porte Email:  Le Corbusier, Palais de l'Assemblée de Chandigarh, Copenhagen, 1991, fig 58 (for the drawing of the wheat sheaf)

Catalogue Note

Rattan Singh was Le Corbusier's principal modelmaker in Chandigarh. Here he poses with the model for the Governor’s Palace, in an image reproduced from volume six of  Œuvre Complète 1952-1957. He is also illustrated holding a model of the Chandigarh Secretariat.  The Governor’s Palace was to be the fourth monumental public building in Chandigarh, along with the Secretariat, High Court, and Assembly. Nehru, however, apparently was uncomfortable with the notion of having a palace in a democracy, and prevented it from being built despite Le Corbusier’s intensive lobbying over the years to put up a fourth structure of some sort. In 1999, the city of Chandigarh, in conjunction with a conference "Celebrating Chandigarh: 50 Years of the Idea," constructed a 1:1 model of the Governor’s Palace on its originally intended site, in order to give participants a full sense of Le Corbusier’s vision for the esplanade of the new capital city.

Using Le Corbusier's design (Fig. 3), Singh (seen in Fig. 6 with Le Corbusier) created teak molds for the architect's cosmological signs, which were then impressed into the concrete walls of Chandigarh's public buildings (as seen in Fig. 4, the portico of the Assembly). 

--R.R.