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ISSUE 6 - The Obsolete Edition
Chandigarh
by Michael Gough
Why do most of us who enter the
fray of painting for the first time reach for a watercolour set? Painting
in watercolour is really tricky. It’s a game of patience and dexterity.
You can’t rush your depiction. Push it too quickly and the rendered
scene soon turns to a muddy puddle. I have often been struck by the skills
employed by the artists who have to colourise and render a city planner’s
drawings of a new build. They take such an unpredictable, fluid medium
and use it to illustrate a solid, permanent building or housing complex.
It’s the kind of image you could well imagine being on the front
of an architect’s presentation which forms the sales pitch of a
new project. The image usually looks great; it’s a beautiful sunny
day, the trees are in blossom and the local community are out in force
making the most of their astounding new civic centre. This erratic medium
is gently and patiently co-erced with finesse and delicacy to render slate,
stone and glass. It’s not the kind of work you can imagine banging
out in a couple of hours.
Perhaps in a similar way designing a new build for a city is the kind
of job you wouldn’t want an architect to rush either. Setting the
backdrop for a culture’s commercial, political and social existence
is the kind of task that’s worth taking care over. After-all once
it’s built people have got to live in it, so the designer only has
one chance to get it right or the bulldozers move in. Take Chandigarh
as a case in point. It is a 50 year old city, situated north of Delhi
in Northern India and was commissioned by the first prime minister of
India’s independence. Le Corbusier was charged with the responsibility
of designing a lasting legacy, a statement that would be symbolic of India’s
new freedom and an expression of the nation's faith in the future. He
headed a team that included architects Pierre Jeanneret, Jane Drew and
Maxwell Fry who designed the prefectures, the political heartland and
the shopping districts for a population to embrace. Visit Chandigarh today
and you will meet a community fiercely proud of its European modernist
import. However, for such a relatively young city it already looks tired.
Much of the architecture is created in the functional, formal material
of concrete; a building block that has not weathered at all well, often
cracking and discolouring because of the hot and humid climate in the
Punjab.
As it is a symbolic statement of India’s belief in the future, it
is fortunate that the countries fate did not rest in the longevity of
the city. But we need relics like these. In this fast-moving world of
information, transport, livelihoods, principles, you sometimes have to
hold on tight to a thought, or a memory – or a hope – and
still it can slip away into the chasm between expectation and fulfillment.
It is for this reason that I like the ambitions of every watercolour artist
and their medium of choice; one that is so fragile and temporal. The medium
is easy to use badly and it’s widespread practice carries a mass
of work ranging from the abysmal to the inspired. To use it well forces
an artist to persevere, to grow skilful, to dream.
Michael Gough
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