Dr. Avnish Jolly, Chandigarh 2nd February, 2009 : Invaluable documents related to legendary French architect Le Corbusier who planned Chandigarh in the 1950s can soon be seen online, thanks to a move by the administration of the Chandigarh to digitise them. Administration has decided to digitise all the old documents of Corbusier about the designing of the city and all the correspondence between the Government of India and other architects of that time according to sources at the Government Museum and Art Gallery.
The Government Museum and Art Gallery has already started the work of digitising over 50,000 documents available with them that pertain to the period from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. These documents include letters written by legendary architects like Le Corbusier, his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, Mathew Nowicki and Albert Mayer who worked on the concept of city beautiful. Chandigarh is one of India’s most well-planned cities. The documents also include letters written by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Punjab’s former Chief Minister Partap Singh Kairon related to Chandigarh.
For the time being these documents could be accessed online only inside the museum premises but the administration has plans to gradually make them available on the web.