Latest news with #LeCorbusier
India.com
31-05-2025
- India.com
5 Must-Visit Instagrammable Places In Chandigarh For Amazing Photography
To fuse contemporary city life with the beauty of nature, Chandigarh is a city of visual wonder. Designed by Le Corbusier, the designed city is an aesthetic wonder for the photographer and Instagrammer alike. Whether you love lush green spaces, architecture or street paintings, Chandigarh is full of picturesque places. Grab your camera or smartphone and let us discover the most Instagrammable locations in Chandigarh to go viral! 1. The Rock Garden To enter the Rock Garden is to enter a fairytale world created from recycled objects. This art installation, by Nek Chand, is a maze of statues, falls and paths. The rough walls, bright mosaics and strange installations offer endless photo opportunities. Whether you're looking to take pictures beside a waterfall or getting a close-up shot of the complex sculptures, you'll surely feel the artistic juices flowing here. Highlights Art installations from reclaimed ceramics and industrial debris. Different pages with different themes and layouts. The best time to visit: Mid-morning or late afternoon for low lights. Quick Facts It was founded in 1957 by Nek Chand, a government official. It occupies more than 40 acres and has over 5,000 sculptures. It is located in Sector 1, near Sukhna Lake. 2. Sukhna Lake Sukhna Lake is a picturesque paradise at the foothills of the Shivalik Hills and offers an environment to explore, photograph and enjoy nature. The shimmering waters, dotted with vegetation, offer romantic views at dawn and dusk. Add in boats skimming on the lake and you have a postcard-worthy image. Remember to take a selfie on the path or click the colors of the sky as the sun sets. Highlights Paddle boats and shikaras for posing. There are walking and running trails around the lake. Golden hour is the time of the day that gives you the most stunning photographs. Quick Facts Artificial reservoir created in 1958 Spread over 3 square kilometers Ideal for picnics, birdwatching, and fitness. 3. Rose Garden (Zakir Hussain Rose Garden) The sprawling, 1,600-plus rose garden is a dizzying explosion of colour and scent. The well-groomed lawns and cul-de-sacs are ideal for candid shots and closer-ups of flowers. Visit in February or March, when the garden is at its most spectacular and every room is adorned with flowers. There's the Rose Festival, which takes it one step further with events and decorations. Highlights The largest rose garden in Asia – 30 acres of roses. Spring blooms and figurines offset the roses. The perfect device to capture nature and woo-woo! Quick Facts The college was founded in 1967, and named for India's third president Zakir Hussain. Organizes the annual Rose Festival every February. Located in Sector 16 4. Sector 17 Plaza Sector 17 Plaza, aka the centre of Chandigarh, is a place full of activity and glamour. The fountains, the gardens and the street musicians are alive. Photograph individuals enjoying themselves, or pose among contemporary buildings. It's particularly wonderful on an evening when the fountains are lit up and the plaza hushed to life. Highlights: Illuminated fountains and lively ambiance Excellent for street and evening photographs. It is flanked by well-known stores and restaurants. Quick Facts A pedestrian mall that serves as a cultural and commercial centre. Live music, festivals, and exhibitions frequent the place. It is located in the heart of Chandigarh. 5. Japanese Garden Hidden within the city, the Japanese Garden lulls you into Zen-inspired bliss. The Japanese-style bridges, pagodas, and koi ponds in this park add a touch of exoticism to your pictures. The greenery and peaceful atmosphere is a popular backdrop for both portrait and landscape shots. Visit in spring for hummingbirds. Highlights Traditional Japanese landscaping and architecture Stone bridges, stone lanterns and koi ponds. Relaxing atmosphere for taking quiet photos. Quick Facts Inaugurated in 2014 Located in Sector 31 13 acres of walking and meditation areas. Final Thoughts Chandigarh is not a planned city but rather, a canvas which is ready for you to stare into. Whether old gardens or contemporary murals, every site has its own story to tell. Whether you're a pro photographer or a casual IGmer, these are places where you can create an infinite amount of images. So take your camera and hit the streets and explore the photogenic city of Chandigarh
France 24
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
Counting the cost of being an Oasis fan: How much would you pay?
Culture 12:27 We bring you a report that crunches the numbers about how much Oasis fans will spend on food, drinks and tickets for a chance to see the 1990s British rockers when their tour begins in July. (Hint: hundreds of euros!). We also talk to two French environmental activists who travelled from Paris to Shimla in northern India by train to raise awareness about the planet. Meanwhile, a new exhibition looks at French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier's influence on Brazilian artists. Plus we take you inside a museum and art space in industrial London called God's Own Junkyard that curates, creates and sells tens of thousands of neon lights.
Irish Independent
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea review: Graceful docudrama rehomes this evicted Irish design visionary
Why is this? Well, probably because it assures us that even those of lofty vision and creative brilliance can be just as petty and covetous as the rest of us. More so, perhaps. How Franco-Swiss architectural giant Le Corbusier appropriated the credit for a house he didn't build is the example portrayed in this docu-drama study of Irish design legend Eileen Gray. E.1027 was the name given to the modernist Cote d'Azur villa that Gray and architect lover Jean Badovici built for themselves in 1929. Seeking solitude in order to continue working, Gray vacated two summers after the building's completion, leaving it to Badovici and taking up at a house 20 minutes further inland. Badovici's great friend Le Corbusier would often visit and stay at the seaside house after Gray's departure. He would eventually paint murals on its bare walls, an act some have likened to territorial pissing over a building he felt drew from his influence. Gray herself is said to have been appalled at this desecration of her intentionally plain walls. But it was in the aftermath of Badovici's death that Le Corbusier's obsession became clear. After failing to secure purchase of the house, he built a wooden shack in its shadow where he would die in 1965. In those final years, it is said that he would never hurry to contradict any ascription of the house to his hand. It would be three years later that E.1027, now dilapidated and unloved, would be rediscovered in an architectural journal. The name Eileen Gray (who was still alive and living in obscurity) gradually became etched on the property as its chief visionary and developer. Before long, the Enniscorthy-born trailblazer was at last getting the lavish retrospectives her genius merited. Her forgotten table and chair designs, meanwhile, would be mass produced for the homewares market. You might even be sitting on one at this very moment. This film by Zurich co-directors Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub manages not to daub everything under the banner of revisionism and righting of misogynistic wrongs – and yet they are inescapable. Initially a project about their fellow countryman Le Corbusier, the pair saw Gray and the erasing of her name from E.1027 were the real story. ADVERTISEMENT Essayed with profound grace (and narrated in the first person) by Natalie Radmall-Quirke, Gray is seen as a pensive, focused creative who flees aristocratic privilege in rural Wexford for the melting pots of London and Paris. Archive images of interwar decadence flash across a stage backdrop craftily adapted for various settings of the saga. Relationships with both women and men ('men always wanted to compete or get married') are never at the expense of a fierce drive to manifest in materials the lines and contours of her mind. By the time she meets the younger Badovici (Axel Moustache), her crosshairs are beginning to move from interior design to the chambers that will house it. Le Corbusier (Charles Morillon) and his dominance in the field looms, but there is too much in Gray's monologue (based on her writings) that alludes to single-mindedness. A house, she reasoned, was shelter but also a body and a refuge, a place to be oneself at a time when homosexuals were being openly assaulted. E.1027 would have no road access and sit just out of view; a clean, temporal abode to serve those inside rather than prying architectural sensibilities. 'People in a room become resonating bodies,' she says in one passage. 'I wanted to create a space for the woman who needs a room of her own.' It's safe to say design is a realm rarely associated with this storied little island of ours. A luminary in that field – and a female one, at that – such as Gray should be spotlit at any occasion, not least for the attempts to erase her from history. She'd approve of a tribute such as this, what with its stark but elliptical manoeuvres, its grace of form and composition, and the way in which it seems at once modern but somehow lived in. Four stars
The Guardian
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea review – extraordinary architect's story told (again)
There is some exasperatingly passionless and obtuse direction in this detached, sometimes almost somnolent drama-documentary about the extraordinary Irish architect and designer Eileen Gray, played here with a distracted air by Natalie Radmall-Quirke. (This film comes after another odd docudrama about Gray, Mary McGuckian's The Price of Desire, from 2015.) In the late 1920s, Gray designed and built a modernist villa on the Côte d'Azur for herself and her lover, the Romanian architectural journalist Jean Badovici (played here by Axel Moustache): she called it E.1027 (the 'E' standing for Eileen, 10 meaning the 10th letter, J, for Jean, the second, B, for Badovici and the seventh, G, for Gray.) But she quarrelled with him and impulsively moved out, leaving him in sole possession of this marvellous property – and then Badovici's friend Le Corbusier, nettled by this brilliant work which was inspired by but possibly surpassed his own, painted frescoes all over the white walls. He then allowed the architectural world to assume E.1027 was his own work and the feebly submissive Badovici simply allowed him to do it. So this is a story of explosive emotion, creativity and betrayal, but you wouldn't think so from this film's somnambulist tread; it declines fully to inhabit any of its scenes, almost as if it is showing the actors in rehearsal, sauntering self-consciously through the action. Eileen and Jean get into a car, for example, by sitting down on two chairs side-by-side on a soundstage. The drama side of things is seemingly muted by the documentary side. The film, moreover, doesn't show the blood, sweat and tears that must have surely been involved in the colossal task of building E.1027 in such a remote spot. The house is just there and the characters waft through it. Gray admirers might prefer Gray Matters, Marco Antonio Orsini's documentary on the subject. E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea is in UK and Irish cinemas from 16 May
Hindustan Times
11-05-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
Chandigarh's slum demolitions: Urban order or displacement dilemma?
When Chandigarh was envisioned by Le Corbusier and his team in the 1950s, it was meant to embody a vision of organised, humane living—free from the chaotic sprawl of older Indian cities. Yet seventy years later, the city's ongoing issues with informal settlements, and their recent demolition, reveal the persistent gap between idealistic planning and the messy, evolving realities of how cities actually grow. In recent weeks, Chandigarh witnessed a wave of demolitions targeting slum clusters, particularly in Sector 25 and parts of Dhanas. The drive, undertaken by local authorities following high court orders, displaced hundreds of families. The situation calls for an analytical look—at planning intentions, legal mandates, and the pathways Chandigarh must now consider if it wishes to remain both a model city and a compassionate one. The planning ethos & its frictions Chandigarh's original master plan was rooted in ideals of functionality, hierarchy of movement, and clear segregation of spaces based on land use and income group. The city included earmarked zones for economically weaker sections (EWS), with modestly designed homes meant to accommodate essential service providers—those whose labour was indispensable to the functioning of the city. However, over time, the influx of migrants far outpaced the capacities envisioned in the original blueprint. Many of these migrants arrived in search of construction jobs, domestic work, or informal trade opportunities but found formal housing either unaffordable or entirely unavailable. As a result, informal settlements gradually took shape along the city's margins, often occupying vacant parcels of government land. The emergence of these settlements highlighted a fundamental mismatch between Chandigarh's rigid, top-down planning model and the dynamic, improvisational nature of real human settlement. Despite repeated attempts at relocation and rehabilitation through schemes like the EWS Housing Plan and the Chandigarh Small Flats Scheme, the cycle of encroachment and eviction continued. The latest demolitions are not a new chapter, but rather a continuation—one shaped by decades of unresolved urban pressures. Demolitions: Legal frameworks vs human realities The recent eviction operations were carried out under directives from the Punjab and Haryana high court, which emphasised the need to clear unauthorised constructions from public lands. Authorities justified the action on the grounds of city aesthetics, public safety, and the right to planned development. From a legal standpoint, the demolitions are consistent with principles of planned urbanism and the safeguarding of government-owned land. Chandigarh's unique status as a Union Territory gives its administration direct accountability to the central government, increasing pressure to comply strictly with judicial directives. Yet from a human and sociological lens, the situation becomes far more layered. Many of those evicted had lived in these areas for years—sometimes decades—contributing to Chandigarh's labor force and social infrastructure. Voter ID cards, ration cards, and other official documentation had, in many cases, validated their presence and blurred the line between illegal occupation and de facto residence. While the administration stated that eligible residents would be considered for rehabilitation under existing welfare schemes, ground reports suggest that many were left homeless with little notice. The absence of immediate alternative housing or livelihood options raises difficult questions about the ethics and effectiveness of implementation—especially when legal justification exists but humane execution falters. A case for inclusive urbanism As Chandigarh continues to expand its infrastructure and economic ambitions, it must confront a deeper, more existential question: who gets to claim space in the 'City Beautiful'? There is an urgent need for policy frameworks that recognise informal urbanism not just as a problem to be erased, but as a reality to be understood and integrated. Planned cities may begin with geometry and order, but they endure through the lives that unfold within them. Future strategies might include in-situ upgrades, development of affordable rental housing, and participatory planning models that center the voices of the marginalised. Chandigarh now has a chance to evolve from blueprint to belonging—a shift that honours both its legacy and its future. (The writer is a Chandigarh-based architect & interior designer)
