Unravelling an unsung architect

Pierre Jeanneret had stated, ‘The working methods I discovered in India finally taught me self-esteem after so many failures in France.’ His role in the making of the city of Chandigarh was significant and a true testimony to his enormous talent.

Immediately after India’s Independence in 1947, it became necessary to build the capital of Punjab for two important reasons. First, to look for the seat of the government and, second, to rehabilitate the shattered survivors who crossed over the border during the partition of the country. My parents and I were part of those survivors.

Albert Mayer, the planner-architect who was already working in India, prepared the first Master Plan of Chandigarh, along with his associate, Mathew Nowicki, a Polish architect. Unfortunately, Nowicki died in an air crash in Egypt in 1950. Unable to proceed without him, Mayer suggested to the then Punjab Government that another architect should be engaged to work on the project. The search team, consisting of P.N. Thapar and P.L. Varma, met Le Corbusier in Paris that very year and prevailed upon him to accept the assignment of Architectural Advisor to the Punjab Government. Le Corbusier suggested that his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, be engaged in the project. Albert Mayer’s plan served as the basis for Le Corbusier’s Master Plan.

Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret came to Chandigarh together in February 1951. E. Maxwell Fry came later the same month, followed by Jane B. Drew.

All the architects connected with the Chandigarh Project considered Pierre Jeanneret to be a very responsible, meticulous, innovative and hard-working architect with a lot of perseverance. A devotee of modernity in architecture, Pierre Jeanneret evolved a pattern of simplicity and minimalism as the ideology for him to suit the Indian way of living and economy within the ambit of the modern movement.

Art was Pierre Jeanneret’s mainstay and architectural belief. It excised many superfluous clutter and lent order and dignity of a pure form to his designs. He used exposed brick and articulated the material in several ways, such as making trellis (filigree) or jali enclosures, thus producing intricate patterns of light and shade. This characteristic was inspired by rustic and rural features such as the plasticity of mud walls, jalis, small windows, spouts and mono-textural elements. Such simplicity of Pierre Jeanneret’s work gathered universal appeal and appreciation. His work reflects his personality, which was based on sound reasoning and logic. Pierre Jeanneret used stone in multiple ways in columns and walls while making enclosures, both interior and exterior. He handled brick with subdued delicacy and exalted elegance with consideration for local weather conditions. He used jali to channel light and air and also to defuse the glare, providing privacy and security at the same time.

Pierre Jeanneret’s views, published in an issue of Marg magazine that was devoted exclusively to Chandigarh, best explain his undiluted commitment to noble aesthetics:

A work without invention and truth will not be a milestone across the centuries. The imitation of a masterpiece of the past will always be inferior to this masterpiece as the former will not be in harmony with its time.

There are no such things as big works or small works: there are only works with an aesthetic sense, or without one. If I insist on this point, it is because certain people consider that buildings of lesser value, less than one lakh, do not require the intervention of the aesthetic sense and can be trusted to anyone.

What are our new towns composed of? Of small housings and small buildings which cover the majority of the area. It is therefore that these small buildings take greater care to create aesthetically rich environments. Form is the container of functions and mystic values.

In Chandigarh, Le Corbusier took selective responsibilities such as the Master Plan of the city, the Capitol Complex and other buildings such as the Museum and Art Gallery, College of Art, Lake Club and City Centre, Sector 17. Pierre Jeanneret, on the other hand, built most of the infrastructure in the form of habitats, schools, hospitals, public buildings and the sprawling Panjab University campus.

The two British architects, Fry and Drew, made a valuable contribution to the making of Chandigarh, although for a short period of three years. They designed houses, colleges, community centres, shopping complexes, health centres and so on. Each of these associates of Le Corbusier had a distinct style of architecture.

Pierre Jeanneret also looked after the implementation of Le Corbusier’s projects, especially the Capitol Complex. It was a gigantic task that involved supervision, giving clarifications, and even detailing, if required, in the absence of Le Corbusier.

Sneh Pandit in her book, Guide to Chandigarh, observed:

In many ways Chandigarh exhibits the stamp of Jeanneret’s work more than it does Le Corbusier’s. It was he who helped to design the mass of humbler dwellings around which the daily life of the common man is woven...

Two temporary offices were the first structures to come up on Chandigarh soil to take care of the two disciplines, architecture and engineering, which were responsible for the planning and construction of the city. The Chief Engineer’s office was at a distance of about 150 feet from the Chief Architect’s office;

every day we would watch engineers walking to that office to get clarifications. P.L. Varma, the then Chief Engineer of Chandigarh, would visit to meet Le Corbusier or Pierre Jeanneret. As per official hierarchy, the junior officers walked behind him and behind them were a

few peons carrying files. This stood out in contrast to the conduct of senior architects such as Fry and Drew, who showed no hesitancy in carrying their drawing boards themselves from one block to the other, despite many on the way offering help.

Pierre Jeanneret performed multiple tasks with equal efficiency, which revealed not just his tremendous designing skills, but also his ardent dedication to work. Despite his ill health, he worked tirelessly without any break. In Chandigarh, Pierre Jeanneret was burdened with multiple assignments and varied responsibilities including those of Chief Architect and Chief Town Planner; First Director/Principal of Chandigarh College of Architecture (CCA) and Planner of Townships beyond Chandigarh. He also had to train Indian architects and teach them about modern architecture that was suitable for Indian conditions.

Pierre Jeanneret was an educator without even knowing it, and his way of teaching was unique. He would prepare a chart of dos and don’ts and circulate it to all the architects to follow. That became an invaluable source of knowledge for Indian architects. In case Pierre Jeanneret disapproved of any drawing taken to him, he would never cross it end-to-end or throw it in the face of the architect; he would simply remark, ‘reconsider this’.

Most of the times, a small suggestion from Pierre Jeanneret made an immense improvement to the quality of the design. He untiringly mentored and inspired Indian architects to imbibe the spirit of modernism. The younger generation of architects not only gained the knowledge and experience of handling concrete and brick, but also learnt a new architectural vocabulary and varied uses of patterns, textures and materials that they could adapt and re-adapt. Pierre Jeanneret was suave and soft-spoken in conveying his own and Le Corbusier’s ideas to them.

Devoid of ego, Pierre Jeanneret never hesitated to shake hands even with a worker at the site, if he found him doing a good job. Despite his modest nature, he was the only person who could confront Le Corbusier and endure his volatile temperament. They would sometimes fight like children to put forth their respective points of view.

As a part of a lecture held at the Chandigarh College of Architecture, Maristella Casciato, senior curator and head of architectural collections at the Getty Research Institute, while introducing Pierre Jeanneret, recalled that Le Corbusier himself explicitly acknowledged the degree of responsibility his cousin had accepted when commenting: ‘L’architectur Corbusier à Chandigarh ne serait peut-etre pas sans Pierre’ (Without Pierre, Le Corbusier’s architecture in Chandigarh might never have been).

(Excerpted with permission from Shivdatt Sharma’s ‘Pierre

Jeanneret and Chandigarh’;

published by Niyogi Books)