After last week’s column on Martyrs’ Memorial, it is imperative to mention the Geometric Hill. One of the four monuments that took shape at the Capital Complex, “it was supposed to be a part of the Monument of Solar Hours that had to comprise an artificial hill, geometric in form, along with Le Corbusier’s diagram of the daily balance of light and darkness that ‘rules men’s creativity’”.

The diagram was to be inscribed on the side facing the plaza. However, though the geometric hill has been built, there is no sign of any inscribed diagram,” Archana Chaudhary, Architect, Haryana Housing Board, tells us it was conceptualised by Le Corbusier in 1950s. Situated adjacent to the memorial, the Monument of Solar Hours was to be inscribed on the 45m-wide inclined face of the Geometric Hill.

“This was to be a huge earth tilled hill, with its lower half in concrete relief work, and the top covered with grass turf,” says V N Singh, nodal officer of Le Corbusier Centre. “Though, now it looks like an incomplete and unkempt piece of work,” chips in Rahul Khosla, a visitor.

While there were talks by the UT to revive Corbusier’s legacy in 2006 and to set up signs and symbols representing the basis of his philosophy and through which he arrived at his understanding of the art of the city design, “it was decided to complete all unfinished project at the four hundred yards long stretch, which joins the Assembly and the High Court, including the Monument of the Solar Hours,” chips in one of the officials, hoping that sometime soon the monument is revived to get its true place — an aesthetic focal point from where one can see across the vast swathes, taking in vision the City Centre, the educational zone in the North-East and the Industrial Area in the South East.