Under the shaded space : Le Corbusier and the Mill Owners's Association building

Abstract

"And on this earth alone// which is ours/! The sun master of our lives// far off indifferent// He is the visitor - an overlord// he enters our house." Le Corbusier, Le poeme de / 'angle droit, 1955. In the first minute of 15 August 1947, India affrrmed its independence from the British Raj. Jawaharlal Nehru was to be the prime minister of a sovereign India - a country that believed in the future but was marked by political and religious tensions. In affrrming the country as a nation geared towards progress, Nehru also sought the support of Western architects. It was in very particular circumstances, the birth of the new capital of the Indian state of Punjab, Chandigarh, that Le Corbusier, travelled to India for the frrst time in 1951. Under India's scorching sun, Le Corbusier left an exemplary architectural legacy. This sense of exemplariness is primarily associated with Chandigarh, overshadowing his four works in Ahmedabad-a city in the state of Gujamt, and a bastion of the country's textile industry. Also in 1951, Le Corbusier was invited to visit Ahmedabad. On this trip, Surrottam Hutheesing, Secretary of the Mill Owners' Association, an association oflndian cotton mill owners, commissioned Le Corbusier to design the headquarters of the association in that city. The Mill Owners' Association building from 1954 is a pamdigmatic work, tailor-made for a specific climate and presenting experimental solutions in terms of typology-solutions that are relevant to the debate on contemporary architecture. Le Corbusier operated from a three-dimensional grid. The building is characterised by a volume that serves as a brise-soleil and which, detached from the main volume by a small gap, determines a principle that is activated throughout the building: that of the in-between. The purpose of this chapter is to "dissect "Le Corbusier's Mill Owners' Association building, as if it were a body, penetrating the shade that this "body-house" provides.