Review: How Architects, Experts, Politicians, International Agencies, and Citizens Negotiate

Modern Planning: Casablanca Chandigarh

How Architects, Experts, Politicians, International Agencies, and Citizens Negotiate Modern
Planning: Casablanca Chandigarh
Review by: Erica Allen-Kim
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 73, No. 3 (September 2014), pp. 437-
439
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians
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engagement. The choice at the Graham Stockholm. None of the versions were identical planning techniques led by Michel Écochard
to highlight the origins of the specula- in either content or layout and varied according to (Casablanca) and Le Corbusier (Chandi-
tive environments (and to omit the mass-­ availability of material and space considerations. garh). There, and in other sections of the
produced objects that formed the other 4. Enzo Mari was the only previously involved exhibit, similar quantitative and qualitative
architect who was not represented at the ­Graham.
major component of the 1972 exhibition) methods of analysis such as survey, sketch-
Given his radical antiobject, anti­consumerist
is a testament to the current and persistent ing, and photographs were displayed for
stance, he was invited by Ambasz “not to design
interest in theorizing the sphere of domes- both projects. Despite these efforts at clear
an environment.” In Ambasz, Italy, 262.
ticity. An exhibition about an exhibition, comparability, the question of how similar
the Graham show was, at its core, referential, or different these two devel­opments were
analytical, and as such, not a restaging in remains an open one. The gallery texts and
either content or layout. The interesting archival material suggested less easily
exception to this rule was the revival of How Architects, Experts, Politicians, quantifiable tendencies toward sociology
the films from the original show. As at International Agencies, and Citizens (at Casablanca) and poetics (at Chandi-
MoMA, they were used to accompany the Negotiate Modern Planning: garh) that complicated and enriched the
design work—not meant as stand-alone Casablanca Chandigarh exhibition’s objectives.
pieces but as performative supplements Centre Canadien d’Architecture/ The growing interest in vernacular
enacting potential in situ scenarios for the Canadian Centre for Architecture and everyday practices drove disagree-
environments. Montreal, Quebec ments at CIAM IX, where human science–­
One could argue that a drawback to 26 November 2013–20 April 2014 influenced grids were presented in opposition
this meta-staging was that it presented a to the Chandigarh grid. The Habitat du
largely two-dimensional reexamination of Two plywood partitions snaked across Plus Grand Nombre grid by the GAMMA
the original show. While there were some the back room of the Canadian Centre for Group (Groupe des Architectes Modernes
models on view, the films remained the Architecture (CCA)’s exhibition on Casa- Marocains), led by Écochard and Georges
primary access to the spatial qualities of blanca and Chandigarh during the fall Candilis, deployed data on building typol-
the built examples. And yet, the success of and  winter of 2013–14. The mounted ogies and spatial practices to argue for
this exhibition lay precisely in the absence reproductions of planning grids first dis- learning from the bidonville, or Moroccan
of the objects: the message then and in played at CIAM (Congrès International informal settlement. In contrast, the Chandi-
2013 was that objects were less important in d’Architecture Moderne) IX, Aix-en- garh grid focused on geographic analysis
and of themselves and that the semantics Provence (1953), exemplified an innova- and diagrams of density and the organiza-
of the term “environment” befit a broader tive approach to exhibition design by the tion of the residential center, thus exem-
design mandate. Environments require Tokyo-based firm Atelier Bow-Wow and plifying Le Corbusier’s proposed use of
users, not spectators, and only then can cocurators Tom Avermaete and Maristella the grid as a planning tool at CIAM VI,
architecture mobilize action. Casciato. Openness to multiple modes of Bridgewater (1947), in which four functions
display—photographs, models, original (living, working, circulation, and cultiva-
jasmine benyamin drawings, film, information graphics, and tion of body and spirit) served as a stan-
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee facsimiles—conveyed a desire to engage dardized system for developing universal
with the complexities of modern planning solutions for the modern city.
during a period of decolonization. The challenges of delineating a para-
The exhibition was organized around digm shift in modern planning were
Notes three themes: exploring, planning, and ­evident not only in the mirrored galleries
1. Emilio Ambasz, ed., Italy: The New Domestic designing the civic fabric. The projects for for the two cities but also in the central
­Landscape; Achievements and Problems of Italian Casablanca, a planned development of the room that visitors could traverse several
Design (New York: Museum of Modern Art, ancient Moroccan city’s periphery, and times. The exhibition was anchored by this
1972), 11. Chandigarh, a new capital city for the post- “Transnationalism”–themed room, which
2. According to curator Peter Lang, Ambasz
partition state of Punjab, India, mirrored detailed the harnessing of modern planning
exerted significant influence on the design of
each other along a vertical axis centered theories in the name of technical assistance
the environments and even asked the partici-
on the “Transnationalism”–themed room, to the developing world. A round confer-
pants to revise their designs two or three times.
with both projects converging in the back ence table, laid with facsimiles of planning
My thanks to Peter Lang for this insight.
3. The Graham Foundation iteration was one
room with its undulating partitions. There, documents, invited visitors to scrutinize
in a series of traveling exhibitions originating the focus was on the historical moment the methods, objectives, and discourses of
in Columbia University’s Graduate School of when their respective grids were displayed development and modernism that directly
Architecture, Planning, and Preservation in the at CIAM IX, which led to intense debates affected citizens. In one example, a series
Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery before traveling and contributed to the subsequent dissolution of leaflets on the “Village Problem”
to the Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel; the Dis- of CIAM. This rhetorical move encour- published by the Ford Foundation for the
seny Hub Barcelona; and the Arkitekturmuseet, aged visitors to compare and contrast the Indian Ministry of Food and Agriculture

exhibitions    437

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and the Community (1953) forcefully of architects, as convincingly supported by would have strongly substantiated the claim
claimed that problems of underdevelop- the two planning grids. This is not to say that ideas about modern planning and
ment such as “low standard of living” were that architects like Candilis escaped the architecture in the postwar context were
caused by factors such as “families failing essentializing trap common to top-down challenged by transnational encounters
to see the importance of personal cleanli- planning. Yto Barrada’s lush color photo- and exchanges with ordinary citizens.
ness.” For visitors who closely examined graphs of Candilis and Shadrach Woods’s The filled-in suspended courtyards
these documents, the essentializing ten- 1953 design for the Carrières Centrales of Carrières Centrales visible in Barrada’s
dencies of international technocrats and housing estate clearly show the infilling of photograph (Figure 1) raise questions
local politicians would sit uneasily next to the suspended courtyards with cinder- about how people are changed by architec-
the curators’ assertion that paradigms of blocks. Avermaete and Casciato, however, ture even as they alter their buildings and
planning shifted from top-down thinking have not explained how ATBAT-Afrique, landscapes. The contemporary images of
to greater sensitivity for local cultures the African branch of Atelier des Bâtisseurs, Chandigarh and Casablanca, with wares
and existing conditions in Casablanca and misunderstood the function of courtyards spread on mats on the sidewalk and satel-
Chandigarh. in traditional Muslim cultures. A more lite dishes dotting apartment façades, offer
The ambitious scope indicated by the nuanced treatment of the suspended tantalizing clues about current-day adap-
exhibition’s title, which foregrounds the courtyard or loggia in Carrières Centrales, tations. How did residents respond to the
diverse group of stakeholders, was evident an example of Écochard’s concept of privatized “courtyard,” and in what ways
in the wealth of historical material illus- the Cité Verticale, would have provided a did their social practices change with the
trating the transnational and multidisci- multi­faceted understanding of local adap- transformation of open loggias into enclosed
plinary scope of postwar planning missions. tation and appropriation in response to rooms? In what ways perhaps were these
The experiences and perspectives of local modern planning theories. apartments a continuation of the colonial
citizens over the past sixty years were less According to Monique Eleb, stacked mission civilatrice, and in what ways did citi-
fully addressed. The curators commis- courtyards made it impossible for women zens appropriate and transform the original
sioned photographs and short films by Yto to informally access neighboring spaces. intent of modernism? In turn, how did these
Barrada and Takashi Homma to illustrate Furthermore, Eleb has noted that Éco- tactics and negotiations affect planning
the two cities’ current conditions. In one chard himself had reservations about the paradigms? Although the exhibition in
example, a film by Takashi Homma con- suspended courtyard, predicting that resi- some ways fell short of its ambitious goals,
sisted of a speeded-up projection of people dents would seek to enclose the space for the curators have made significant strides
in and around Chandigarh’s central bus additional living area.1 By connecting the in weaving together the complex processes
station (2013): pedestrians and motorists subsequent alterations of the buildings by of planning and design in an accessible and
crossed in front of the stationary lens, buses citizens to diverging approaches by Éco- engaging display. The commissioned pho-
arrived and departed at an accelerated chard and ATBAT-Afrique the exhibition tographs may serve as a starting point for
speed, and crowds waited in various states
of boredom—yet the zoomed-in perspec-
tive left much of the city’s fabric out of view.
Certainly the film conveyed the well-used
and lived-in quality of Chandigarh’s build-
ings, public spaces, and infrastructure.
In a sense, the lens replicated the observa-
tional methods of postwar architects and
planners detailed throughout the exhibi-
tion. The film also indicated how this
technique less readily engaged with the
voices and perspective of inhabitants. The
visitor was left to speculate on the ways in
which Chandigarh’s citizens negotiated
and interacted with the original plan.
The curators marshaled rich archival
material to convey the influence of human
sciences such as anthropology for theorizing
modern architecture on a global scale in
the 1950s. During this period, universalizing
tendencies of modernism intersected with
a growing interest in vernacular practices Figure 1  Carrières Centrales, Casablanca, Morocco. ATBAT-Afrique, 1953. View of infill and satellite
and traditions by the younger generation dishes, 2013 (commissioned by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; copyright Yto Barrada).

438    j s a h / 7 3 : 3 , S e p t e m b e r 2 014

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further explorations of these adjacencies, century were recently on display in Istanbul. on the walls and literally encircled the main
exchanges, and negotiations that continue These exhibitions reevaluated the changing body of display, which focused on certain
to affect the paradigms of contemporary discourses and practices of archaeology as archaeological sites within the framework
planning and architecture in a globalized both a scholarly enterprise and a popular of eight different themes. True to the
context. The exhibition made a strong case endeavor, particularly in relation to the exploratory and interdisciplinary cultural
for conceptualizing planning as intelligent late Ottoman and early Turkish contexts. mission of SALT, the sites were presented
and responsive design that is ever engaged They explored how contemporaries looked through their various historical represen-
in a conversation with its users. at, understood, and wrote about the cul- tations in different media from written
ture, art, and architecture of the past from texts to oil paintings, from drawings to
erica allen-kim their various and varying perspectives. photographs and films, together with some
University of Toronto The exhibition Scramble for the Past: original artifacts, among which were also
A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman dispersed commissioned installations on
Related Publication Empire, 1753–1914 at SALT Galata was the nature of archaeology by artists Mark
Tom Avermaete and Maristella Casciato, curated by Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik, Dion and Michael Rakowitz.
Casablanca Chandigarh: How Architects, and Edhem Eldem (Figure 1). It revolved The main narrative connecting these
Experts, Politicians, International Agencies, around a double narrative of an apparently different and sometimes distant sites
and Citizens Negotiate Modern Planning conventional historical account of the birth started with “The Beginnings in Greece
(Zurich: Park Books, 2014; distributed and development of “modern archaeology” and Egypt,” represented most significantly
by University of Chicago Press), 392 pp., from the founding of the British Museum by Jean-Baptiste Hilaire’s painting The
230 color and 160 b/w illus. $45 USD, in 1753 to the establishment of the Ottoman New Mosque and Istanbul Harbor (1789).
€35 (paper), ISBN 9783906027364. Pious Foundations Museum in 1914 along- It depicts the shipping abroad from the har-
side a contested story about some histori- bor in Istanbul of some remains belonging
cally renowned archaeological sites that to the Athenian Acropolis—then part of
once dotted the former Ottoman lands. Ottoman territory—more specifically the
Note As its provocative title Scramble for the Past collection of the comte de Choiseul-
1. Monique Eleb, “An Alternative to Functionalist suggests, rather than presenting a celebra- Gouffier, the French ambassador to the
Universalism: Écochard, Candilis, and ATBAT- tory narrative of archaeological practice, Ottoman Empire between 1784 and 1792,
Afrique,” in Anxious Modernisms: Experimenta- the exhibition put forward a critical inter- whom Hilaire accompanied on his expedi-
tions in Postwar Architectural Culture, ed. Sarah pretation of the history of archaeology. tions to Greece and Asia Minor. The iconic
Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault
The seemingly neutral time line, high- and gargantuan Descriptions de l’Égypte
(­Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture;
lighting the major dates in the long march (1809–22), written by hordes of French
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 67.
of archaeology alongside significant histori- “scientists” after Napoleon Bonaparte’s occu-
cal political events, constituted a backdrop pation of Ottoman Egypt, complemented

Osman Hamdi Bey and the Americans:

Archaeology, Diplomacy, Art
Pera Museum, Istanbul
15 October 2011–8 January 2012

Scramble for the Past: A Story of

Archaeology in the Ottoman
Empire, 1753–1914
SALT Galata, Istanbul
22 November 2011–11 March 2012

Artamonoff: Picturing Byzantine  

Istanbul, 1930–1947
Koç University Research Center for
Anatolian Civilizations, Istanbul
25 June–10 November 2013

Three exhibitions that examine ways of

looking at the ancient and Byzantine past Figure 1  View of Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire,
from the eighteenth to the early twentieth ­1753–1914, SALT Galata, Istanbul (photo by Refik Anadol, 2012).

exhibitions    439

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