Concrete Consciousness

It's not just about the bricks,mortar,design. How people deal with the architecture,share emotions and lives,is what Barbara Hoegner captures in her exhibition,Horizontal City!

Written by Parul
November 25, 2009 04:29 AM IST

3 min read

Horizontal City,Vertical Village Living with Le Corbusier in Chandigarh & Berlin,Barbara Hoegner juxtaposes two different worlds

It’s not just about the bricks,mortar,design. How people deal with the architecture,share emotions and lives,is what Barbara Hoegner captures in her exhibition,Horizontal City! Vertical Village – Living with Le Corbusier in Chandigarh and Berlin. The exhibition is curated specially for Chandigarh and on view are as many as 74 pictures,displayed in pairs,one picture from Chandigarh next to one from Berlin. What strikes the viewer is the similarity of situations,emotions,structures that people face,be it images taken in the Le Corbusier building in Berlin or various places here in Chandigarh. Children in a play mood,market scenes,night festivities,personal spaces,flowers…there is a connect in the contrasts. Knowledge,experience,cross-cultural perspective,passion,its a mix of all that and more,and of course,the beauty of people,various ways of growing into the architecture and dealing with the heritage by the people of both countries, explains the photographer.

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It all began with Barbaras photographic documentary work on Le Corbusier in Chandigarh in 2005 and her city portrait Living with Le Corbusier – Photographs from Chandigarh with a variety of photographs was displayed at the Frankfurt Book Fair. We were so sceptical about it,but it was a huge success,as people saw a different India in these pictures, the exhibitions success led to the appointment as artist-in-residence by the residents welfare association in the Le Corbusier building in Berlin,which has around 500 flats in one block…It was an absorbing experience that made me see the architect in a new light, the pictures about life in the so-called vertical village were published as a book.

Chandigarh,says Barbara has its own Indianess,as well as a modernist setting,while the images taken in the Le Corbusier building in Berlin cover the unique architecture as well as the individually designed homes. The juxtaposition of two different worlds,both struggling with a certain monotony among Le Corbusiers principles,reveals a human approach in developing a sense of belonging.

Presented by The Indian Institute of Architects,Chandigarh-Punjab Chapter in association with the Goethe Zentrum Max Mueller Bhawan,the exhibition is on at Government Museum and Art Gallery till December 2.