The exhibition as a whole, like this room, presents a complex picture of power and freedom, and of modernity and craft. It traces the evolution of architecture in India and Ghana, as they moved from colonial rule to independence, both countries led by men – Jawaharlal Nehru and Kwame Nkrumah – who wanted to use modern architecture and construction as emblems of a new order. “Land of Freedom and Justice where progress and development never cease” proclaims an old Nkrumah-friendly newspaper, on show in the exhibition, alongside images of ambitious projects.
Paradoxes arose – in particular the fact that modernist architecture was primarily a European invention and therefore associated with the old imperial powers. Central figures in the V&A show are Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, “two potty types” as they called themselves, an earnest British couple who had battled to establish continental modernism in their soggy country before the second world war. At first commissioned by the British government to design public projects intended to placate the restive population of Ghana – a community centre, educational buildings – from 1951 they helped plan Chandigarh, the new capital city ordained by Nehru for the state of Punjab. They then invited Le Corbusier, the most influential architect of the time, to design a capitol of government buildings, for the assembly, the law courts and the secretariat.1
They didn’t, though, much engage with local traditions. Fry was dismissive of indigenous architecture, and his and Drew’s engagement with west African culture didn’t go much beyond the use of patterns abstracted from Ashanti ceremonial stools on their concrete screens. In Chandigarh, Le Corbusier banned cows and informal markets – essential features of most Indian cities – from his capitol. “It’s a place for gods to play; it’s not for humans,” objected Aditya Prakash, principal of the Chandigarh College of Architecture from 1967.
It took a generation of African and Indian architects to develop approaches that belonged more to their countries. The Ghanaian president had an architecture school set up at his Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Knust) in order to achieve just that. Nehru insisted that the design team in Chandigarh be staffed with young Indians, who could learn their trade while working on the city.
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- 1. In warmer climates, with the help of top-down political leaders, modernist ideas could be realised with a scale and confidence hard to find in Europe. These architects adapted their style to local conditions, with overhanging roofs to provide shade from the sun, and perforated screens and narrow floor plans to allow breezes to pass through. Concrete, in Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh, is not a material of machine-age precision but a rough and muddy, labour-intensive substance built, as Drew put it, “with aid of men, women, children and donkeys”.