Long highlighted by the city’s eminent residents, the issue of the missing and damaged drawings and documents of Le Corbusier have caught the attention of a UK architect.

On a visit to the city, Owen O’Carroll found the condition of Corbusier’s drawings and documents so pitiable that he wrote to the Home Secretary, the Le Corbusier Foundation and the Docomomo Institute about the neglect.

Associated with the O’Carroll Associates, which deals with conservation, the architect was in the city in April.

In his letter to the Home Secretary, O’Carroll wrote: “What UT Chandigarh is doing is tantamount to an international crime, destroying purposefully key documents of the 20th century, entrusted to your care, but neglected and allowed to be destroyed.”

He wrote if the Administration is unable to preserve the documents, the Le Corbusier Foundation or organisations like the Docomomo Institute would be willing to help.

To the Le Corbusier Foundation, he wrote: “The UT Administration has allowed irreplaceable drawings and letters of Le Corbusier to be enormously damaged. I visited the city museum on the design and growth of Chandigarh. Large original drawings, sketches and letters between Corbusier and Nehru are fading or severely damaged due to improper mounting techniques, adhesive corrosion, daylight damage, mounting and moisture damage. Around 25 per cent of the documents may be lost forever, a further 50 per cent have suffered major damage. This, I believe is an international crime.”

Recently, the first Indian chief architect of the city M N Sharma had also stressed on how the original documents were either missing or damaged. He had stated that the original drawing of the Master Plan was no longer available with the Estate Office.

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