The Great Courtyard: Capitol Complex Chandigarh

The envisioned Capital Complex of Chandigarh by Nehru and designed by Le Corbusier, was never complete. It was of the relationships of the most important functioning buildings in terms of governance of a state was placed in the head of the city, in a complex, shearing strong spacial relationships with each other. The assembly and the secretariat on the left and high court on the right, with the governors, palace holding accountability as the “man” in charge. The imagined relationships and hierarchy of functioning was Government at the top and the people at the bottom. The context was only of the Himalayas beyond and shutting their eyes towards the city and the people. However, the Governor’s place was never complete and the complex although function lost its relationships to each other and with time shut down even to public access. The proposal in this project aims to reimagine this incompleteness of the complex in contemporary context and issues ranging from who would be the ones holding accountability to the government to relationships in the complex.