Governor's Palace is a proposed government building in

Chandigarh Chandigarh is a city and union territory in northern India, serving as the shared capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana. Situated near the foothills of the Shivalik range of Himalayas, it borders Haryana to the east and Punjab in the ...

, India. The building was designed by

Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , ; ), was a Swiss-French architectural designer, painter, urban planner and writer, who was one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture ...

, with help from

Pierre Jeanneret Pierre Jeanneret (22 March 1896 – 4 December 1967) was a Swiss architect who collaborated with his cousin, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (who assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier), for about twenty years. Early life Arnold-André-Pierre Jean ...

, a Swiss architect and Corbusier's cousin, but it wasn't built. A model of the building was on display at the Le Corbusier Centre,

Zürich Zurich (; ) is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. , the municipality had 448,664 inhabitants. The ...

, Switzerland and Chandigarh Architecture Museum, Sector 10, Chandigarh. Planning and development of the city of Chandigarh is considered a unique experiment of the modern independent India. A very detailed model was built by Alexander Gorlin and was published as an analytical exploded defragmentation on July 29, 1980.

Design

Le Corbusier’s design for the Governor’s Palace featured a pyramidal massing composed of five ascending levels, each set back to create a stepped silhouette against the Himalayan backdrop. The lowest level comprised a brise‑soleil screen and colonnade, providing shaded transition from the ground plaza to the ceremonial interior. Above this sat the governor’s reception and state rooms, guest apartments, and at the summit a private apartment and terrace "barsati" capped by an inverted concrete canopy. A continuous water trough at the fourth level collected monsoon rains, visually detaching the hovering upper form from its solid base and reinforcing the metaphor of a "floating crown" over the city. It was positioned at the terminus of the Chandigarh Capitol’s central axis linking the

Secretariat Secretariat may refer to: * Secretariat (administrative office) * Secretariat (horse) Secretariat (March 30, 1970 – October 4, 1989), also known as Big Red, was a champion American thoroughbred horse racing, racehorse who was the ninth winn ...

, Assembly and High Court, the palace was intended to mediate between civic ritual and natural landscape. Le Corbusier conceived three sequential plazas separated by water channels with the City Plaza, Capitol Plaza and Palace Forecourt. It culminates at the palace steps overlooking an expansive "Charbagh"‑style garden. This formal ''Persianesque layout'' drew inspiration from Mughal terraces at

Pinjore Pinjore is a town in Panchkula district in the Indian state of Haryana. This residential 'township', located close to Panchkula, Chandigarh, is set over 1,800 feet above the sea level in a valley, overlooking the Sivalik Hills. Pinjore is kn ...

and

Rashtrapati Bhavan The Rashtrapati Bhavan (, ISO: ''Rāṣṭrapati Bhavana''; ; formerly Viceroy's House (1931–1947) and Government House (1947–1950)) is the official residence of the President of the Republic of India at the western end of Rajpath, Rai ...

, embedding Chandigarh within India’s garden‑city tradition despite its modern materials and geometric rigor.

References

{{Le Corbusier Le Corbusier buildings in India Proposed buildings and structures in India