Year-long celebrations to mark 75 years of making of Chandigarh
Foundation to hold series of events, launch tomorrow
Chandigarh Citizens Foundation (CCF) will roll out a series of major commemorative events this year to mark 75 years of the ‘Making of Chandigarh’, celebrating the city’s journey as India’s first planned modern city and reflecting on its past, present and future.
The year-long celebrations will begin with a curtain-raiser event titled “Celebrating 75 Years of the Making of Chandigarh (2026)” at CRRID in Sector 19 here on Saturday.
The inaugural programme will bring together urban planning and architecture experts to deliberate on Chandigarh’s evolution, emerging challenges and future direction.
Renowned international urbanist Alain Bertaud will deliver the keynote address, “Chandigarh Evolution: Early 1960s to 2026 – An Outsider Perspective.” Bertaud worked in Chandigarh in 1963 with Pierre Jeanneret and later went on to build a distinguished global career in urban planning and policy.
The keynote will be followed by a presentation by Dr Bimal Patel, the architect of India’s new Parliament building and the Central Vista Redevelopment project in New Delhi, titled “Learnings from Urban Design and Development of Other Indian Cities”.
A major highlight of the event will be the felicitation of Shiv Dutt Sharma, one of the most prolific modernist architects associated with Chandigarh. Sharma was part of the original Chandigarh Capital Project Team under Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret and later served as the Chief Architect of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
As part of the 75-year celebrations, the CCF will also organise a national-level month-long exhibition from February 24 to March 22. The exhibition will highlight Chandigarh as a collective creation of Indian architects, engineers and administrators, going beyond the widely recognised legacy of Le Corbusier. It will foreground the contributions of PL Varma, MS Randhawa, Aditya Prakash, Jeet Malhotra, SD Sharma, BP Mathur, UE Chowdhury and others.
The celebrations will culminate in a global-level event in November, with national and international participants, focusing on Chandigarh’s status as a futuristic city built on sustainable urban design principles for harmonious living.
