Raw Concrete: The Shifting Identity of Chandigarh.

Chandigarh was designed by Le Corbusier as a clean break — a new capital for a newly independent Punjab, free from the weight of colonial planning and the perceived chaos of Indian urbanism. The Capitol Complex, with the Assembly, Secretariat, and High Court, remains one of the most significant architectural ensembles of the 20th century.

But Chandigarh was also an imposition. Corbusier designed for an idealised citizen in an idealised climate. The brise-soleil that articulates the Secretariat's facade is formally brilliant; it is also under-scaled for the Punjab summer. The open city plan, with its wide sectors and abundant parks, rewards the car owner and makes life difficult for the pedestrian.

In the decades since, residents have adapted and appropriated. Boundary walls have been raised. Shops have colonised pedestrian underpasses. Trees have grown to soften the brutalist scale in ways that were not drawn on Corbusier's plans. The city has made itself liveable by departing from the plan.

The conservation challenge today is acute. Exposed concrete in a hot, humid, and monsoonal climate deteriorates rapidly. Carbonation, rebar corrosion, and spalling are visible across the Capitol Complex. The question of how to conserve buildings designed without a conservation strategy — buildings that were meant to represent the future, not the past — has no easy answer.

The most honest approach acknowledges the paradox: Chandigarh is both a masterwork and a lesson in the limits of architectural certainty. It should be conserved not as a perfect Modernist statement but as a living city that has evolved, struggled, and endured. That is, ultimately, a more interesting story.