1. OM INSTITUTE OF
ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
Topic – Biography of Nek Chand Saini
Submitted To –
Ar. Manoj Kumar
Submitted By - Parth
Roll no :- 1610463011
2.
3. He Was Born On 15 December 1924.
He Hailed From Shakargarh Region (Now In
Pakistan) Of District Gurdaspur. His Family
Moved To Chandigarh In 1947 During The
Partition. At The Time, The City Was Being
Redesigned As A Modern Utopia By The
Swiss/French Architect Le Corbusier. It Was
To Be The First Planned City In India, And
Chand Found Work There As A Roads
Inspector For The Public Works Department
In 1951. He Was Awarded The Padma
Shri By Government Of India In 1984. He
Died In 2015.
4. Nek Chand Was The First Person In His Village To Go To High
School, And After Studies In Lahore Returned To Work On The
Family Farm, Where He Built Huge Scarecrows Out Of Cloth And
Rag. But His Peaceful Existence Received An Almighty Jolt With
Partition, When Sectarian Violence Forced His Family To Leave The
Ancestral Home. They Trekked In A Refugee Column For Three
Weeks Before Finding Safety, And Chand Eventually Found
Employment In Chandigarh, Supervising Road Construction.
5. His vision for the garden appeared to emerge
when he was a child. Born into a Hindu farming
family in a rural village in the shakargarh region of
the Punjab in British India, he was entranced by
his mother’s tales of kings and queens in a
beautiful kingdom, and he would play in the local
forests, making model buildings by the river bed.
He made his first bangles
he had sculptures from
broken collected on the
ground in a market.
6. Chand Began His Vast Creation In
Secrecy. From 1952 He Was Working
As A Roads Inspector As Part Of Le
Corbusier’s Huge Construction Project
Of Chandigarh, The New Capital Of
The Half Of Punjab Remaining In
Independent India After Partition In
1947. Outside That Work, However, He
Had Begun To Build His Clandestine
Garden In A Forest Clearing In 1958.
Hardly Anyone Knew About It Until,
After 15 Years, It Was Discovered By
The City Authorities. He Was
Potentially In Serious Trouble: He Had
Been Building Illegally On City Land In
An Area Under Strict Control, And He
Was A City Employee To Boot.
7. Nek Chand Was The Creator Of The
Extraordinary Rock Garden Of
Chandigarh, A 25-acre Environment In
Northern India That Contains More Than
2,000 Statues. A Combination Of
Sculpture, Architecture And Visionary
Landscape, The Garden Takes The Form
Of A Series Of Chambers And Courtyards,
With Winding Walkways Suddenly
Opening Out To Large Vistas And High
Waterfalls.
8. Having embarked on a mission
to turn waste into beauty,
Chand used broken crockery,
iron foundry clinker, electric
plug moulds, fluorescent tubes,
bicycle frames, bottles, glass bangles,
shells, cooking pots and smashed up
bathroom fittings to create his
wonderland.
9. His figures of queens and courtiers,
beggars and ministers, schoolchildren,
revellers and dancers, monkeys,
elephants and camels are set in different
chambers linked by low arches and
covered in mosaic. There are also
hundreds of strange-shaped rocks
installed in meandering lanes, two huge
waterfalls, deep gorges, rushing streams,
a model Punjabi village, an amphitheatre
and a colonnade of giant swings. More
than 5,000 visitors a day cram the
pathways and dramatic gorges.
10. His Use Of Waste Materials Rocketed,
And Collection Centres Were Set Up
Around The City To Provide What He
Needed. He Started To Make Larger
Statues With The Help Of Assistants,
Bringing Untrained Labourers Up To
The Standard Of Skilled Craftsmen. A
Pumping Station And Waterfalls Were
Constructed, And Chand Made Use
Of The Building Methods He Had
Observed When Working Under Le
Corbusier, Especially Shuttering To
Form Reinforced Concrete.
11. PADMA SHRI AWARD
His work appeared on a postage
stamp in 1982, and he was
honoured with a Padma Shri
award in 1984 by the Indian
government for his contribution
to the arts. He was invited to
exhibit his work in Paris and
Berlin, and in 1986 spent six
months in Washington making
sculptures at the National
Children’s Museum.
12. NEK CHAND FOUNDATION
The Nek Chand Foundation, a registered
charity, was formed in 1997 with the aim
of supporting Nek Chand's work and
raising awareness of the Rock Garden
throughout the world.
The Foundation's projects include:
creating surveys, publishing much-
needed documentary and publicity
material; arranging exhibitions and
coordinating semi-annual volunteer trips.
