"The City of Chandigarh puts us in touch with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with places and buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within our reach." - Le Corbusier Upon India's independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, its first Prime Minister, dreamed of "a new town, an expression of the nation's faith in the future." The incarnation of Nehru's vision, the city of Chandigarh was the brainchild of renowned modernist architect Le Corbusier, born of his utopian dream of an avant-garde city, and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, who oversaw production of thousands of objects that furnished it. Recently, record prices at auction for these pieces have brought awareness of this great project and its creators to a broader public. This catalogue raisonne sheds new light on this visionary urban project that is generating growing interest among design aficionados around the world. 400 illustrations

Illustrated with photographs dating from the time period to the present, this book documents the architectural project and the production of the furniture, offering a definitive summary of this epic modernist enterprise. A further chapter is dedicated to the work of Lucien Hervé, the famous architectural photographer who depicted the city extensively. The architect, urban planner, painter, writer, designer and theorist Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, was born in Switzerland in 1887. In 1922 Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret opened an architectural studio in Paris, inaugurating a partnership that would last until 1940. They began experimenting with furniture design after inviting the architect Charlotte Perriand to join the studio in 1928. After World War II, they sought efficient ways to house large numbers of people in response to the urban housing crisis.

Chandigarh, built in the 1950s to a scheme by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret with their team of international and Indian architects, until the present day is regarded an icon of modernist urban design. Austrian artist Werner Feiersinger has recently travelled to the legendary capital of India s federal state Punjab. Inspired by Ernst Scheidegger s book "Chandigarh 1956"," " he has put together a vast pictorial account of the city s famous architecture today. This new book features some 300 of Feiersinger s photographs. With the artist s view and based on his own creative experience as a sculptor, he shows the expressive sculptural qualities of the buildings. He captures the place s vivid atmosphere and virtuosity and illustrates its continuous topicality. This artistic approach clearly distinguishes this book from previous publications on Chandigarh, most of which are of merely documentary character. The essay by Austrian architect Andreas Vass reflects on Chandigarh s history, its architectural qualities, and its future development. The title "Chandigarh Redux "refers to Francis Ford Coppola s Apocalypse Now Redux, the 2001 extended version of his epic war film of 1979. "

Conceived soon after Independence, Chandigarh, the new capital for India''s Punjab province, has become a landmark of modernism and an unusual experiment in comprehensive civic design. This book records the various built elements of the city.'

The book describes the story of Clarté, Le Corbusier’s first apartment building, continuing the narrative into the 21st century. The steel skeleton building completed in Geneva in 1930/1932 is a prototype of the Moderne style and a precursor of the Unité d’Habitation. The building was neglected for many decades and not listed as a historic building until the 1990s. In 2007 the external envelope was repaired as the first step, followed by refurbishment of the interior, in which building preservation requirements were taken into account in an exemplary manner. The building log book by the architects and structural engineers is illustrated with numerous new and historic drawings and photographs, and has been supplemented with an account of the building’s history. The renovated building is presented in large photographs.

"This book documents two complementary urban realities that have played a fundamental role in the imagination, definition and redefinition of the twentieth-century modern city. Shifting away from an understanding of architecture as the construction of monumental masterpieces, the texts collected here assemble the narratives behind the public spaces, housing and social facilities in these two cities, where modern plans have proven unexpectedly resilient and adaptable over time. This perspective is reinforced through visual contributions by Yto Barrada and Takashi Homma--two photographers especially invested in capturing everyday urban life. In a world marked by decolonization and Cold War politics, Casablanca and Chandigarh appear simultaneously as exponents of and countercurrents to modernization and its development perspectives. The book's three chapters set the context for reading Casablanca and Chandigarh as the results of nuanced, dynamic processes of international exchange driven by the engagement and expertise of a new class of design professionals. As a dossier of actors, alignments and agendas, the book contributes to an alternative historiography of post-war urbanism and to recent reflections on the impact of transnational practice."--P. [4] of cover.

A unique document of architectural photography and the concepts of visual communication of architecture and urban planning.