The Unsung Hero Of Chandigarh

Shiv Datt Sharma’s Life Story Is The Stuff Movies Are Made Of – From Experiencing The Partition Of India To Building A New City, The Modernist Architect ‘hero’ Has Done It All

- Maria Louis

Even a fleeting encounter with Shiv Datt Sharma, better known as SD Sharma, will leave you inspired. A survivor of Partition, he began life anew in the city of Chandigarh as a young refugee. After acquiring his National Diploma in Architecture in 1959, with virtually no resources at his command, he enrolled himself in the team of architects working on the Capital Project…and his hard work and persistence paid off when he got the opportunity to assist Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in building the city. It’s a testament to his exemplary architecture, that Sharma was given the task of completing Le Corbusier’s museum after the untimely death of the legendary French architect.

If that’s not enough of a ‘fairytale’ success story, there’s even more. The six decades of his practice of architecture has spanned varied experiences that colour the fabric of the 1931-born architect’s professional life with a brilliance that can only be marvelled at and learnt from. No wonder, then, that most of his contemporaries have been generous in their praise of his contribution (see boxes). While introducing him for his higher studies in Milan, where he did his post-graduation on an Italian scholarship, Jeanneret described him as an “architect of rare qualities who understands deeply the meaning of built environment.”

As an architect working on the Chandigarh Project from 1963-73, Sharma adopted and extended the philosophy of Modernism espoused and practised by Le Corbusier and Jeanneret – an idiom of hybrid thinking. The pure architecture and rational thoughts were geared to building for the purpose, with no superficialities. It was honest expression, glorifying the versatile materials of brick and cement chosen for noble aesthetic reasons – new materials to build a new India.