Corbu’s Sanskar dream redrawn

AHMEDABAD: Even as the

Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation

(

AMC

) earmarks a sizeable budget for restoration of a work of one of the world’s pioneer in modernist architecture—Le Corbusier’s museum, Sanskar Kendra, scholars around the country pour in suggestions. Rahul Jadon from the faculty of architecture, UPTU, Lucknow, recently re-imagined the Sanskar Kendra space.

Jadon reflects in his paper that the first building

Le Corbusier

built in Ahmedabad was Sanskar Kendra, in 1954, it was to be a cultural centre and exhibition place. The museum was an exposed brick and concrete edifice with a peripheral exhibition space on raised ‘pilotism’, which realized Corbusier’s theory of extendable spaces for museums.

“The museum of the city, Sanskar Kendra, was part of an extensive cultural and education project that Le Corbusier repeatedly envisioned and never built,” says Jadon. He adds, “The programme included museums of history anthropology, archaeology and ethnography along with an exhibition area, restaurants and an open air theatre.” Jadon points out that of the whole planned cultural centre, only the museum or Sanskar Kendra was built. “The onus of continuing Corbusier’s legacy fell on architect B V Doshi, who rose to the occasion and designed the acclaimed Tagore Hall in the museum complex,” Jadon says.

Jadon led a team in his institute that chalked up a plan to visualise Corbusier’s unfinished project. “We have re-imagined the landscape with maximum retention of existing trees. A sub-graded garden is created to connect the museum complex and Tagore Hall,” says Jadon.


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