Tuesday, April 8, 2014
12:00pm – 2:00pm
Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute111 Thayer Street
Free admission
Vikram Prakash - Deruralization
South Asian Studies at Brown, RISD Liberal Arts, and RISD Architecture present a lecture by the eminent architectural historian and theorist, Vikramāditya Prakāsh.
DERURALIZATION - Le Corbusier's Capitol in Globalizing Chandigarh
Discussant: Itohan Osayimwese, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture
Vikram Prakash is the co-author of the now seminal textbook of architectural history, A Global History of Architecture, and is a scholar of history and politics of the modernization project in India. His first book, Chandigarh's Le Corbusier, examines the making of Chandigarh, India's post-indepence capitol for the Punjab, as an archive of not only the collaboration between the master French architect Le Corbusier and the master Indian politician, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, but also of the new modes of claiming state and international authority, shaping questions of identity, and imagining geo-political futures in the era of decolonization. Using Chandigarh as historical lens again, his current works looks at the politics "dereulaization," or the reshaping of the rural sphere and its subjects, in India and South Asia at large in the 20 century.
This talk will present the recent work of the Chandigarh Urban Lab on the preservation of the Capitol Complex in Chandigarh, especially in terms of its relationship to its northern rural landscape, that was originally intended to be preserved, but is now threatened by unchecked development by the forces of globalization.