CREATORS OF CHANDIGARH

1.Julian Hill Whittlesey.
October 27, 1905 – May 20, 1995 was a prominent American architect and planner who co-foundedfirms Mayer & WhittleseyIn 1935, he co-founded Mayer & Whittlesey, with Albert Mayer. The firm designed Manhattan House and other large buildings. They also helped design the CHANDIGARH.

2.Albert Mayer.
(December 29, 1897 - October 14, 1981), an American planner and architect. He is well known for his contribution to American new town development and his innovative planning work in India, including the master plan of Chandigarh, the new capital of the Indian Punjab. Mayer practiced as an architect in New York City post-1935, as an engineer stationed in India for the U.S. Army during World War II, and a planner and consultant after the war.

3.Matthew Nowicki. In Poland known as Maciej Nowicki) (26 June 1910 – 1 September 1950) was a Polish architect. He was notable in his day for being appointed chief architect of the new Indian city of Chandigarh. He was overlived by his wife Stanislawa Nowicki, also an architect who taught from 1951 to 1977 at the University of Pennsylvania.

Nowicki died around midnight on 31 August/1 September 1950, in the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 903 near Wadi Natrun in the Western Desert of Egypt. He had been returning from India where he was chief architect designing the new city of Chandigarh.

4.Charles-Édouard Jeanneret.

4.Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier (French: [lə kɔʁbyzje]; October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades; he designed buildings in Europe, Japan, India, and North and South America.

Dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities, Le Corbusier was influential in urban planning, and was a founding member of the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM). Le Corbusier prepared the master plan for the city of Chandigarh in India, and contributed specific designs for several buildings there.

5.Pierre Jeanneret (22 March 1896 – 4 December 1967) was a Swiss architect who collaborated with his cousin, Charles Edouard Jeanneret (who assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier), for about twenty years.Jeanneret, in collaboration with the English husband-wife team of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, was responsible for much of Chandigarh's large civic architecture project. His most remarkable contribution has undoubtedly been the designing of the fourteen categories of mass-housings that constitute the living and amenity areas of Chandigarh. Jeanneret, along with Ar. Jugal Kishore Chowdhary, Ar. Bhanu Pratap Mathur and Er. Agya Ram, was responsible for a significant amount of designing for the Panjab University, including the Gandhi Bhawan and the University Library.

Jeanneret stayed on in Chandigarh after its construction, advising the local government in his appointed capacity as Chief Architect of the city. In order to commemorate his legacy, the Chandigarh Administration has restored his residence, House No. 57, Sector 5, and converted it into a Museum dedicated to his contributions to the city, on his 121st Birth Anniversary i.e. March 22, 2017.Some of his major works in Chandigarh include the M.L.A. Hostels in Sector 3 and 4, Polytechnic for Men (now CCET) in Sector 26, the State Library, Town Hall and the Post & Telegraph Building in Sector 17, the Architects' Office (now Le Corbusier Centre) in Sector 19, the P.G.I.M.E.R. in Sector 12 (in collaboration with Jeet Malhotra, Aditya Prakash and H.S.Chopra) and the Shops on V4 in Sector 11.

6.Jane Drew.

 Jane Drew,DBE, FRIBA (24 March 1911 – 27 July 1996) was an English modernist architect and town planner. She qualified at the Architectural Association School in London, and prior to World War II became one of the leading exponents of the Modern Movement in London.

At the time Drew had her first office, with the idea of employing only female architects, architecture was a male dominated profession. She was active during and after World War II, designing social and public housing in England, West Africa, India and Iran. With her second husband Maxwell Fry she worked in West Africa designing schools and universities, and with Fry and Pierre Jeanneret, on the housing at Chandigarh, the new capital of the Punjab. She designed buildings in Ghana, Nigeria, Iran and Sri Lanka, and she wrote books on what she had learnt about architecture there. In London she did social housing, buildings for the Festival of Britain, and helped to establish the Institute of Contemporary Arts. After retiring from practice she travelled and lectured abroad, receiving several honorary degrees. She was awarded the DBE in the 1996 New Year Honours, gazetted 30 December 1995.only seven months before her death.

7.Edwin Maxwell Fry.

.Edwin Maxwell Fry CBE, RA, FRIBA, FRTPI, known as Maxwell Fry (2 August 1899 – 3 September 1987), was an English modernist architect, writer and painter.In the 1940s Fry designed buildings for West African countries that were then part of the British Empire, including Ghana and Nigeria. In the 1950s he and his wife, the architect Jane Drew, worked for three years on an ambitious development to create a new capital city of Punjab at Chandigarh.

8.Prem Nath Thapar.

Prem Nath Thapar CIE, ICS (13 April 1903– 1969) was a member of the Indian Civil Service in the Punjab region during India's transformation from a British colony to independent nation state.Thapar was chosen to serve as the administrative head of the Chandigarh Capital Project in 1949, at the very beginning of the projects conception. Thapar, working with P.L. Varma, chose the site for the new capital of Punjab via aircraft reconnaissance in the spring of 1948.

Thapar and Varma also led the selection of architects for the new city. Their initial proposal of architect to the Punjab government in December 1949 was Albert Mayer, an American town planner who teamed with Matthew Nowicki to plan the new city. The death of Nowicki in an August 1950 plane crash led Mayer to withdraw from the project and caused Thapar and Varma to go to Europe in search of a new architect in the fall of 1950.

Thapar and Varma agreed that the design of Chandigarh should represent a new, modern idiom of design, not beholden to Indian traditions but instead thoroughly modern. Thapar in particular was emphatic that they should find a good modern architect not bound by an established style Budget constraints led them to confine their search for an architect to soft money areas of Europe.

On the recommendation of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, who were eventually hired to design housing for the city, they went to Paris to interview Le Corbusier in November 1950.Although Le Corbusier initially rejected their proposal, he sent them to visit the Masion d' Unite as an example of his work. Thapar's initial reaction to the design was negative, because the high-rise structure and reliance on elevators was incompatible with the typical Indian style of living. When Le Corbusier eventually accepted the project, Thapar ensured that the avoidance of high rise structures was part of Corbusier's design contract.

After he joined the project in 1950,Le Corbusier expressed his admiration for their choice of site. "I admire Thapar and Varma. They have seen the possibilities of the site. They are big men."Thapar's key concerns during the course of the project were money and liveability over architectural style, but his capable administration of the project generated a strong sense of respect from the architects working on the project. M.N. Sharma, one of the Indian architects on the project team, recalled that "P.N. Thapar was a remarkable coordinator and kept a hawk's eye on every aspect of the project.When Thapar was removed from the project in 1951, Maxwell Fry complained of a lack of "unity of administrative control," and Thapar was eventually returned to his position.

In addition to administering the project itself, he also oversaw the resettlement efforts for the 58 villages that were located on the chosen site.After the official completion of the project in 1953, he remained in Chandigarh as the Advisor to the Planning Commission until 1954.