Chandigarh Project projet Le Corbusier - Éric Touchaleaume

The Millowners’ Building

“The building’s location in a garden with a view over the river and the quaint scene of local dry cleaners washing their cotton fabrics and drying them on the sand in the company of herons, cows, buffaloes and donkeys, partially immersed to stay cool, was an invitation to use architecture to produce (…) views that would serve as a background for both everyday business and night-time festivities (…)”.

Le Corbusier

(…) “A continent away, however, Le Corbusier’s architecture was triumphant. The Millowners’ Building opened in Ahmedabad.

The Millowners, an association of owners of cotton mills, was the sort of upper-echelon client Le Corbusier adored. Rich and distinguished, its members belonged to one of the highest castes in Indian society (the Jaïns) and were reputed for their generosity and public-spiritedness. They totally respected Le Corbusier.

Ahmedabad had a population of about one million people. Mahatma Gandhi, who had had a modest compound on the riverbank on the city’s ourskirts between 1915 to 1950, had been instrumental in establishing a connection between the cotton mill owners and their workers. Now their organisation, whith consciously strived for a spirit of goodwill and mutual betterment, wanted a place to assemble that would echo the human harmony they advocated. Desiring a natural setting for their meetings, they had acquired a site overlooking a river. In March 1951, the president of the association, Surottam Hutheesing, had commissioned Le Corbusier to design their headquarters.

From the start, Le Corbusier conceived of a structure with the aura of a private palace. But rather than house royalty and facilitate pomp, this streamlined equivalent of Versailles was to be a place from whith people could savor «the highly picturesque spectacle of the dyers washing their cottons and drying them on the sand, accompanied by herons, cows, buffaloes and donkeys half submerged to keep cool. « The building was intended as a platform for viewing; its external appearance was a secondary consideration. Le Corbusier designed the main elements of each floor as frameworks for the panorama. Architecture would organize and compose the myriad elements of the vista and create glassless picture windows for the benefit of the building’s staff as much as for the distinguished mill owners, who would period-ically meet there.

Essentially, the form of the building is a cube with complex subdivisions inside it. There are no doors or windows, only openings in the walls. Fifty percent of the interior space is empty, with neither function nor furniture; birds fly across it, and one feels that the building exists for their benefit as much as for that of its human visitors. It is a stunning sculptural object, a lively and rhythmic monument in which gray concrete is intensely animated. As he had in Marseille, Le Cotbusier breathed life into inert materials; the ramps and brises-soleil and outdoor staircases and protrusions of every sort give the concrete structure in Ahmedabad fantastic energy.

These elements were all designed to accommodate the vicissitudes of the local climate, and the building was deliberately oriented toward the prevailing winds. The brises-soleil of both the east and west facades were «calculated according to the latitude of Ahmedabad and the precise solar positioning. (…)

Nicholas Fox Weber

“Managing committee table” (ref. LC-AH-01-A). The huge “surf board” lies on top of two ovoid monumental legs. The humble material, teak plywood, is redeemed by a perfect design. Le Corbusier, collaboration B. Doshi. ET 1999.

“Vice-President’s table” (ref. LC-AH-03-A). Le Corbusier, collaboration B. Doshi. ET 1999.

Cupboard with sliding doors for cafeteria (ref. LC-AH-08-A). Le Corbusier, collaboration B. Doshi.

Console desk (ref. LC-AH-16-A).

Free-form desk (ref. LC-AH-15-A).

Villa Shodhan

(…) “Doshi saw Le Corbusier’s musical sense of composition at work as they were detailing the private house that Le Corbusier made for Surottam Hutheesing. (…) This exquisite villa – which Hutheesing sold to another mill owner, Shyamubhai Shodhan, before it was completed – demonstrates the results of Le Corbusier’s flexibility.

A wonderful rough concrete shell with multiple openings and terraces, it includes a spectacular hanging garden. (…)

Outside, the Villa Shodhan is a particularly luxurious Corbusean statement, with its ambient rough concrete punctuated by boldly painted, sparkling yellow and green panels, and its large, round swimming pool, with bright-orange ladders around the concrete perimeter, blending industrial toughness with a euphoric approach to color.”

Nicholas Fox Weber, “Le Corbusier : A Life”, Knopf, 2008

South west side with swimming-pool. Lucien Hervé 1955.

©DR.

View of the living room and ramp leading to it. Two fireside armchairs by Pierre Jeanneret, small free-form concrete table, low bench (ref. LC-AH-13-B) Lucien Hervé 1955.

View of the living room leading to the dining room. Two “LCI” lamps by
Le Corbusier. Two fireside armchairs by Pierre Jeanneret, model created in 1947 (no. 25 of the B.C.B. catalogue, 1952). Lucien Hervé 1955.

Standing indoor lamp, “LCI” model by Le Corbusier, created for the Cité Radieuse de Marseille, around 1950 (réf. LC-LU-01-A).