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Rock Garden of Chandigarh

Coordinates: 30°45′07″N 76°48′25″E / 30.752°N 76.807°E / 30.752; 76.807
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This article is about (a rock garden in Chandigarh, India). For other uses of "Rock garden", see Rock garden (disambiguation).
Waterfall at Rock Garden, Chandigarh.

Rock Garden is a sculpture garden in Chandigarh, India, also known as Nek Chand's Rock Garden, after its founder, Nek Chand, a government official who started the garden secretly in his spare time in 1957. Today it is spread over an area of forty-acre (160,000 m²), it is completely built of industrial & home waste and thrown-away items. [1][2]

Background

The garden is most famous for its sculptures made from recycled ceramic

The Rock Garden project was secretly initiated by Nek Chand around 1957. It was discovered by the authorities in 1975, by which time it had grown into a 12-acre (49,000 m2) complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals. The authorities took over, and the garden was inaugurated as a public space in 1976. It is presently run by the Rock Garden Society.

Nek Chand Saini (नेक चंद सैणी)is an Indian self-taught artist, famous for building the Rock Garden of Chandigarh, a forty-acre (160,000 m²) sculpture garden in the city of Chandigarh, India. 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.

The Garden

The Rock Garden is still made out of recycled materials. It is situated near Sukhna Lake. It consists of man-made interlinked waterfalls and many other sculptures that have been made of scrap & other kinds of wastes (bottles, glasses, bangles, tiles, ceramic pots, sinks, electrical waste, etc) which are placed in walled paths.

This creation has even appeared on the Indian stamp in the year 1983.

  • Entrance
    Entrance
  • Dedication day memorial, July 7, 1988.
    Dedication day memorial, July 7, 1988.
  • Rock Garden, Chandigarh.
    Rock Garden, Chandigarh.
  • Dancing girls at Rock Garden, Chandigarh.
    Dancing girls at Rock Garden, Chandigarh.
  • Decorated wall at Rock Garden.
    Decorated wall at Rock Garden.

Further reading

  • Nek Chand's outsider art: the rock garden of Chandigarh, by Lucienne Peiry, John Maizels, Philippe Lespinasse, Nek Chand. Published by Flammarion, 2006. ISBN 2080305182.
  • The Collection, the Ruin and the Theatre: Architecture, sculpture and landscape in Nek Chand's Rock Garden, by Soumyen Bandyopadhyay and Iain Jackson. Liverpool University Press, 2007. ISBN 1846311209.

See also

References

  1. ^ Nek Chand Rock Garden Sublime spaces & visionary worlds: built environments of vernacular artists, by Leslie Umberger, Erika Lee Doss, Ruth DeYoung (CON) Kohler, Lisa (CON) Stone, Jane (CON) Bianco. Published by Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. ISBN 1568987285. Page 319-Page 322.
  2. ^ Nek Chand's Rock Garden
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30°45′07″N 76°48′25″E / 30.752°N 76.807°E / 30.752; 76.807

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