A ‘Brutal’ pic

Yesterday, I was at the Chandigarh Secretariat of the Government of Punjab. The structure, an iconic landmark of the city, is also one of the best representations of Brutalism – the minimalist architectural style emphasizing functional designs employing raw materials like exposed concrete. While much of the interior has been redesigned and repurposed, the staircase startled me. How on earth could someone design something so cold and disconnected from the landscape.

James Scott in his magisterial ‘Seeing Like a State‘ devotes a substantial portion to Chandigarh. For Scott, Chandigarh’s planning and its built environment is a classic example of how high modernism can end up promoting abstract ideals of uniformity and precision over organic, lived realities of the people. Unlike any other Indian city, Chandigarh is the only one where I never found pedestrians or markets along the major thoroughfares. This was by design. Human interaction was never high in the planners’ vision. Always found the place dystopian.