ARCHITECTURAL WORLD

Chandigarh is the modern, new state capital built by the government of India in the immediate aftermath of its independence from 200 years of colonial rule. On 15 August 1947, India’s hard-won freedom was accompanied by a partition that established Pakistan as a separate country. As a result, the Indian state of Punjab lost its historic capital, Lahore, to Pakistan. Consequently, the search for a replacement capital for East Punjab was high on the agenda of the fledgling Indian nation-state. A burgeoning sense of national pride focused attention on the search for this new capital, and the project took on great symbolic value as a demonstration of the new government’s effectiveness, ideals, and abilities. Although the development of this new capital was ostensibly a state project, the central government took an active role in the endeavor, propelled by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s personal interest in it. Instead of choosing an existing city, Nehru advocated the making of a new cap...

Described by 16th-century European travelers as “the handsomest town in Hindustan, perhaps in the world,” in the 17th century as a “city comparable in size and wealth to London” and as “the Manchester of the East” for its thriving textile industry, Ahmedabad eventually hosted an architectural treasure trove in the 20th century. This metropolis in western India, with a population of more than 2.8 million, is home to four key buildings designed by Le Corbusier (1887–1965), the well-crafted Indian Institute of Management Campus (1962–73) by American architect Louis I.Kahn (1901–74), and outstanding projects by leading Indian architects Charles Correa (1930), Balkrishna Doshi (1927), and Achyut Kanvinde (1916). Named after its founder, Ahmed Shah, Ahmedabad was established in 1411 on the site of Ashawal, an earlier trading settlement that was abandoned in the 11 th century. Occupying the east bank of the Sabarmai River, the original city of Ahmedabad, popularly known as the Old City, conti...