Cross-posted from the GFI blog: I am back from a month traveling in India, visiting Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai. It was an opportune moment to assess the first 100 days of the new BJP government under prime minister Modi.
The Secretariat’s South Block in Delhi
Our interview with the Myanmar Times came out a few days ago: On a research assignment in 2013, Ben Bansal, a writer and graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, arrived in Myanmar for the first time. “It was unlike any place I had been before, yet somehow familiar at the same time,” he wrote by email recently.
Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise building (1908)
This building caught my attention when having friends over and going to the adjacent playground in Central Park. The roof is fenced off and the windows are boarded up. What could be a prime piece of real estate is instead the “Prison on the Park”.
Chandigarh’s Capitol Complex is the administrative heart of the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. Le Corbusier designed the main buildings of Sector 1 himself. We took a tour a few weeks ago.
The Assembly seen from the water ponds on the eastern side
We did a pitstop in Chandigarh last week to look at what is touted to be the most successful planned city of the second half of the twentieth century. Here, Le Corbusier and others had the tabula rasa situation they so craved to realise their utopian vision of urban life.
One building caught my eye while walking through Bangalore. It is the tall tower of the Visvesvaraya Centre complex by Charles Correa. Unbeknownst to me at the time, its equally interesting yet shorter sibling lies to the north along Amebdkar Road.
Mumbai is home to one of India’s richest men, Mukesh Ambani. His residence is probably the most extreme spatial manifestation of the super rich. His Antilia residence towers 170 meters above the city.
To me, Delhi remains tricky to make sense of as a space. This has to do with the way that I experience the city as well as its idiosyncratic layout and design. Fortunately I had a good guide with me this time, whose author I was also privileged to meet for a chat.
State Trading Corporation, Raj Rewal Associates (1989)
Besides Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew there were various Indian architects who helped build Chandigarh. Among them was Aditya Prakash. One of his buildings is the Neelam Cinema in Sector 17.
