Sohanna Srinivasan

This project takes on the expansion of Chandigarh, India and asks how the growth of the city be used to reconcile its apparently contradictory urban identities, and in doing so, start to develop a new style for the forgotten fringes, from a post-colonial perspective.

In 1966, the state of Punjab was split into Haryana and Punjab due to language distribution. Chandigarh therefore became a Union Territory that served both states independently as a capital city.

The rural fringes outside Corbusier’s main grid, but within the territory have been allowed to develop informally to provide cheap housing to those working in the city. The Union Territory government up until now has turned a blind eye to this development as it stops the densification of the original grid: The Union Territory’s main concern as they hope to enlist the whole city for World Heritage in the future.

The whole city is governed by a set of frame controls designed by Corbusier, Fry and Drew in the 1950s. To this day, these documents still control how every building with every programme on every road should be built.

This project envisages a new set of frame controls that cannibalises the city’s long history of regulating development, however doing so in a way that creates a viable future for these urban/rural villages in the void; currently being ignored in the Union Territory’s latest master plan for the outer fringes.