“I was offered the Chandigarh Project at the Indian Coffee house at London in 1949 by the first high commissioner of Independent India, VK Krishna Menon,” says Chandigarh’s first Indian chief architect MN Sharma in his memoirs — Making of Chandigarh: Le Corbusier and after.

UT administrator Kaptan Singh Solanki released the memoirs on the 93rd birth birthday of the architect on Thursday.

Presenting an eyewitness account of the making of Chandigarh, Sharma says in the memoirs that French architect Le Corbusier was initially reluctant to take up the assignment of designing the new Capital CityChandigarh, due to travel distance and offered to design the city from his Paris office. He adds that Corbusier took up the project on the condition that he would visit the site twice a month for a year and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret would work fulltime.

In 1950, Corbusier agreed to design all the buildings in the Capitol Complex while his team of noted British architects Maxwell Fry, his wife Jane B Drew and Jeanneret were designated as senior architects. Sharma was the first Indian architect to be involved in the project and worked mostly on public buildings. Sharma recalls that the paucity of money was a challenge in the city’s creation and Corbusier viewed the project as building a ‘Radiant City’.

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