I've said it before: you can take the woman out of architecture but you can't take architecture out of the woman. And so I fell back on the old architourist's practice of visiting buildings by either the modern masters or the latest and greatest Gehry so that you can boast that you've "done Ronchamp" or "done Falling Water" or "done Bilbao", like a boy scout proudly displaying their merit badges. From Manali, then, I headed to the Corb-designed city of Chandigarh to visit his capital complex buildings, which include the Secretariate, the Assembly and the High Court building - all late '40s early 50s brutalist concrete with reflecting pools out front that haven't seen a drop of water in decades and so much security around that the open spaces between the buildings are completely empty of people - so that I could add Chandigarh to my merit badge collection (Ronchamp, La Tourette, Falling Water, Darwin Martin House, Scarpa's cemetary, Scarpa's museum in Verona, Salk Institute, Barcelona Pavillion, Parc Guelle and other Gaudi stuff in Barcelona, LeDoux, Sverre Fenn blah blah blah).
The bus from Manali was a night bus, as usual, arriving at either or 4am or 6am, depending on whose word you took. I was hoping for the latter, so that at least the sun would be up and I wouldn't have to worry about a hotel when I arrived. And given the tire repair and the mexican-standoff with a car on a hair pin turn mid-way along, I thought it might work out for me. But no luck. Not only did the bus arrive right on time at 4am sharp, it arrived in the middle of the first regional power failure that you might have heard about in the news. In the circumstances, I didn't have a clue about the power failure. All I knew was that when I got out of the bus it was ABSOLUTELY PITCH BLACK outside and all I could make out was a field to my left and a field to my right. I could just make out a dim brick wall the height of a fence on one side, but that was it. Maybe my sleepiness was confusing things a bit too, but as the auto-rickshaw drivers swarmed around the just-arrived bus and circled in on the single white lady (i.e. sucker) to give me the hard sell, I quickly realized that I was completely lost, there was no way I was going to be able to hang out till morning and that I was just going to have to take one of them up on their offer to drive me to a Sector 17 hotel, sight unseen. Sector 17, I knew that much, was the commercial centre of town, so I accepted a Rs 50 ride there, thinking that I was on the outskirts somewhere. Turns out, that the ride was about 400m and two left turns, so call me a sucker for falling for that one. We were right downtown after all, but Chandigarh is a peculiar 'new-city' designed by modernist principals and not what you've come to expect in India. And you just wouldn't believe how black and bizarre things were in the middle of the night. The next day in the daylight, I went back to the where I got off the bus and saw it was really just playing fields/parks either side and we were pretty much at the downtown bus station, but who could tell.
Anyway, the hotel was safe but soulless. I bargained the room rate down by about a third and the auto rickshaw driver hung around to collect his commission for bringing me there.
After 4 hours of sleep and a shower, I headed back out to start to get the paperwork in place to visit the Capitol buildings. Given security in this country in general, to be honest, I'm a bit surprised they even let architects visit the government buildings at all. It took two tourism offices and four layers of security but I was in. Apparently, we were lucky to get inside the two Assembly halls at all and only did so because the Assemblies weren't in session. There was another young architecture student dragging her uninterested parents around with her: reminded me of myself dragging mom and dad around to some modern building by Peter and Alison Smithson or Adolf Loos and them just shaking their head in disbelief that I could be interested in such an ugly building. "This is what we paid all that good tuition money for?" they asked.
After solidly earning my merit badge by visiting every storey and roof area that I could get access to and sneaking a few clandestine photos, I headed back through Chandigarh to find a restaurant, which turned out to be nearly impossible. Strange city. Then caught the night train to Jaipur, where I had a day to kill before my next night train to Jaisalmer. I started out in high spirits heading for the old city but things went downhill from there. After a day of insults, slurs, angry shop keepers and being hit on by 10,000 people on the make I couldn't wait to get back on the train again. Congratulations, Jaipuri's you've just set the low bar for my experience in India this summer. From now on, I think every place will be measured against your city. I hope that all of Rajasthan isn't going to be the same, because I'm going to be here for a little while. (Fortunately, I've traded in my ongoing train tickets from Jasailmer to Udaipur via Jaipur again for a direct bus ticket and, as a result, I'm pretty happy that I don't have to spend any more time in Jaipur.)
BTW, I also wanted to visit Dakka or is it Dakha, Bangladesh, to visit the Louis Kahn government buildings and earn another merit badge, but the conditions of my tourist visa state that if I leave India, I can't return in less than 2 months. Another security measure, presumably.
The bus from Manali was a night bus, as usual, arriving at either or 4am or 6am, depending on whose word you took. I was hoping for the latter, so that at least the sun would be up and I wouldn't have to worry about a hotel when I arrived. And given the tire repair and the mexican-standoff with a car on a hair pin turn mid-way along, I thought it might work out for me. But no luck. Not only did the bus arrive right on time at 4am sharp, it arrived in the middle of the first regional power failure that you might have heard about in the news. In the circumstances, I didn't have a clue about the power failure. All I knew was that when I got out of the bus it was ABSOLUTELY PITCH BLACK outside and all I could make out was a field to my left and a field to my right. I could just make out a dim brick wall the height of a fence on one side, but that was it. Maybe my sleepiness was confusing things a bit too, but as the auto-rickshaw drivers swarmed around the just-arrived bus and circled in on the single white lady (i.e. sucker) to give me the hard sell, I quickly realized that I was completely lost, there was no way I was going to be able to hang out till morning and that I was just going to have to take one of them up on their offer to drive me to a Sector 17 hotel, sight unseen. Sector 17, I knew that much, was the commercial centre of town, so I accepted a Rs 50 ride there, thinking that I was on the outskirts somewhere. Turns out, that the ride was about 400m and two left turns, so call me a sucker for falling for that one. We were right downtown after all, but Chandigarh is a peculiar 'new-city' designed by modernist principals and not what you've come to expect in India. And you just wouldn't believe how black and bizarre things were in the middle of the night. The next day in the daylight, I went back to the where I got off the bus and saw it was really just playing fields/parks either side and we were pretty much at the downtown bus station, but who could tell.
Anyway, the hotel was safe but soulless. I bargained the room rate down by about a third and the auto rickshaw driver hung around to collect his commission for bringing me there.
After 4 hours of sleep and a shower, I headed back out to start to get the paperwork in place to visit the Capitol buildings. Given security in this country in general, to be honest, I'm a bit surprised they even let architects visit the government buildings at all. It took two tourism offices and four layers of security but I was in. Apparently, we were lucky to get inside the two Assembly halls at all and only did so because the Assemblies weren't in session. There was another young architecture student dragging her uninterested parents around with her: reminded me of myself dragging mom and dad around to some modern building by Peter and Alison Smithson or Adolf Loos and them just shaking their head in disbelief that I could be interested in such an ugly building. "This is what we paid all that good tuition money for?" they asked.
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| Assembly viewed from Secretariate roof. High Court in the distance. (The internet cafe I'm at isn't reading my phone, so I'll try to send some more pix directly from there later. ) |
BTW, I also wanted to visit Dakka or is it Dakha, Bangladesh, to visit the Louis Kahn government buildings and earn another merit badge, but the conditions of my tourist visa state that if I leave India, I can't return in less than 2 months. Another security measure, presumably.
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