An interesting comment on Le Corbusier’s museum of the city of Ahmedabad was made more than forty years ago in Berlin, where
Oswald Mathias Ungers, one of the most prominent post-war German architects, mentioned this building that was just being completed during his lecture series. His words were largely based on the interpretation of drawings, as the whole complex was not yet finished, and also on rich imagination of what the museum would look like once the concept of water and climbing plants was fulfilled. Today, after half a century, we unfortunately know that the museum complex was not completed with all the planned extensions. Similarly, the
“poetic experiment” with vegetation was unsuccessful, and most of the 45 pools today are empty. However, these failures do not detract from the idea of an ever-evolving museum, which has been repeated in several later Corbusier projects.
The museum is based on a cubic floor plan with a side length of 50 meters. It is entirely suspended in the air on a column grid of 7 x 7 meters, and entry is via a two-armed ramp located in the inner open atrium. The ramp then continues to the roof, where Corbusier envisioned a beautiful garden composed of 45 pools. To prevent their rapid drying, each pool, measuring 50 m² (40 centimeters deep), was to be densely planted with vegetation.
The idea of a garden with floating plants was born in 1930 at Princess Polignac's in Paris. Professor Forneau (director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris) noted during a conversation with Le Corbusier and the poetess Countess de Noailles:
“Le Corbusier, with four centimeters of water on the floor of this salon and a certain preparation, I could grow tomatoes here as big as melons.” Le Corbusier replied at that time:
“Thank you very much, Professor, my wishes are not that lofty.” Twenty years later, while designing the museum in Ahmedabad, Le Corbusier remembered this conversation and visited the Pasteur Institute. Professor Forneau had meanwhile passed away, but this significant institution provided him with a special powdered fertilizer that causes enormous growth irrespective of the natural plant cycle. Currently, the pools on the roof of the museum in Ahmedabad are drained and there is nothing to grow in them. Likewise, the empty concrete planters lining the lower part of the building, from which climbing plants were supposed to grow, are also abandoned.
Museum in Ahmedabad (Le Corbusier)The museum was designed as the most important part of the cultural center and is intended for short-term exhibitions with completely different focuses. In addition to a large hall for temporary exhibitions, spaces for natural history, anthropology, and archaeological collections have also been projected, as well as a library and lecture hall. Additionally, the complex includes experimental workshops for crafts and industrial design, a small summer theater, and a large theater for 1,500 persons. All these buildings are grouped into one ensemble, which according to Le Corbusier's words is to create a certain kind of
“urban citadel.”The entire building stands on columns (pilotis) in a grid of 7 x 7 meters. In the above-ground floor, the columns have a space-forming effect, as they create a two-aisled spatial division. The building rests on a massive cantilevered concrete slab. In the inner atrium, there is a two-armed ramp that serves as the main entrance to the museum, connecting the open ground floor with the exhibition halls upstairs and continuing to the rooftop terrace. Three annexed structures house the collections of the archaeological and anthropological departments as well as a conference room.
As separate objects, subsidiary spaces (a sales booth, a block of restrooms, and a stair tower) reside freely on the ground floor between the columns, along with storage, workshops, a repository of book collections, and a library. These functions are inserted as standalone buildings among the column system and are connected to the adjoining lecture hall. Many of these buildings and also the water basins have an independent position on the supporting columns and an irregular shape, thereby granting the place a unique character. In contrast, the exhibition hall on the upper floor closely follows the grid and runs uninterrupted or by means of partitions around the central open courtyard. The building is almost entirely closed, with only a few openings leading to the outside and into the courtyard primarily serving ventilation.
The problem of natural lighting did not play a role here, as the typical visiting hours of the museum are – appropriate to the climatic conditions – mainly in the evening. Due to the artificial lighting, a second floor was laid over the exhibition rooms, serving as a lighting platform from which the exhibited objects can be illuminated. In Le Corbusier's words:
“From now on we can let light play independently, in pairs or as a whole orchestra – loudly or quietly – using methods comparable to a musical score. Light has become an integral part of the effect of the museum on the visitor. It has been elevated to the level of emotional power and has become a spiritual and determining architectural element.”Against the high daytime temperatures, additional construction and botanical measures were taken. The outer walls are double-layered and are to be additionally protected from sunlight by climbing plants. There are pools on the roof, whose water is protected from evaporation by dense vegetation. According to Le Corbusier, the roof garden of the museum in Ahmedabad is a
“poetic experiment”: “Deciduous and flowering plants sown directly into the water create a blue-red-green-white checkerboard. The water in the pool is fertilized with a special powder that causes extraordinary growth completely independent of the natural rhythm: giant flowers, giant tomatoes, giant pumpkins.”A distinctive characteristic of the building lies in the small height of the ground floor, which measures only two and a half meters compared to the spacious above-ground floor. These proportions not only emphasize the weight of the entire body of the building, but also express spatial unity. In contrast to this consistency, Le Corbusier attempted for the first time in Ahmedabad to realize the principle of a growing museum: the square floor plan can theoretically be enlarged in all directions by just one spatial width. In this case, however, the principle of unlimited growth is restricted by the extensions of permanent collections and the conference room. This topic will be addressed again in some of the later lectures.
part of the second Berlin lecture by O.M. Ungers in the summer semester of 1964
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