This first lecture in the series Utopia Constructed explores the relationship between ideal concepts and the actual practice of architecture and city planning in the context of India. It touches on concepts of the ideal city in classical textual sources and the creation of historic cities such as the 18th century city of Jaipur, but looks in more detail at three post-independence examples: Chandigarh, the capital of the Indian state of Punjab, designed by Le Corbusier; Bhubaneswar, the somewhat less well known capital of Odisha, designed by Otto Königsberger; and the township of Auroville near Pondicherry, a Utopian community which was inspired by the teaching of Indian nationalist, philosopher, yogi, guru, and poet, Sri Aurobindo Ghose and his close spiritual collaborator, Mirra Richard, who is better known as The Mother. It explores the ways in which ideal and utopian concepts of urban planning and societal creation have played out in the lived reality, drawing on field research undertaken in the 1970s and ongoing observations during many subsequent visits to India.
Deborah Swallow became the Märit Rausing Director of The Courtauld Institute of Art in 2004, after a curatorial career at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and The Victoria and Albert Museum.
Utopian places and spaces: the urban ideal in 20th century India is part of
Utopia 2016: A Year of Imagination and Possibility