Chandigarh: French experts to help restore, protect heritage

Tribune News Service

Dushyant Singh Pundir

Chandigarh, November 1

A team of experts from France will be on a five-day visit to Chandigarh from November 15 to assist the UT Administration in identification, restoration and legal protection of heritage items.

An official said the six-member team, including officials of the Ministry of Culture, France, and experts from Foundation Le Corbusier, Paris, would visit the city for the first time to help the administration in conservation and restoration of heritage items by providing a method to identify original items and replicas.

The official said team members would help the administration establish authenticity and tagging of heritage items.

The tagging would provide some kind of official certification so that misuse of heritage items could be prevented. The French experts would also provide guidelines or process to be followed for conservation and restoration of heritage items and legal protection of heritage furniture.

Earlier, the French team was scheduled to visit Chandigarh in 2020 to discuss protection of heritage items, but Covid-19 pandemic derailed it.

At a recent meeting with UT Administrator Banwarilal Purohit, French Ambassador to India Emmanuel Lenain had stated French experts would look into the restoration and conservation works in Capitol Complex and other exposed reinforced concrete buildings.

French architect Le Corbusier designed the ‘City Beautiful’ and the French consultants will now render expertise in the area of identification, restoration and legal protection of heritage furniture as well as in the preservation of the architectural heritage of the city.

In the past one decade, renowned foreign auction houses have earned in millions through the auction of Chandigarh’s heritage items, including tables, teak stools, arm chairs, lounge chairs, book cases, manholes, coffee tables, executive desks and others.

Notably, Paris-based auction house Artcurial had auctioned a city’s manhole cover for 17,851 Euros (Rs 10.87 lakh) in 2010, while in 2007, another manhole cover bearing the master plan ofChandigarh designed by Corbusier had fetched $21,000 (Rs 830,000) at a Christie’s auction in New York.

In an auction in the UK on October 28, a pair of chairs from Punjab Engineering College, UT, was auctioned for Rs 6,21,000.

City’s rich legacy

• 12,793 heritage items were designed by city’s creator Franco-Swiss architect Le Corbusier and his team in 1950s and 60s
• 190 different categories of heritage items include drawings, murals, models, tapestries, chairs and tables among others

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