Gandhi Bhawan Case Study: Plan, Pool and Concrete (Pierre Jeanneret)

Gandhi Bhawan is the small white building standing in a pool on the Panjab University campus in Chandigarh. It was designed by Pierre Jeanneret around 1962 as the university's centre for the study of Mahatma Gandhi, and it was dedicated on 1 December 1962. This case study covers the brief, the site in the campus core, the three-winged plan, the section, the concrete panels, the light, the water problems a 2018 assessment found, and how to see it.

Gandhi Bhawan at a glance

Architect: Pierre Jeanneret, with Bhanu Prakash Mathur credited alongside him by the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)
Client: Panjab University
Location: Panjab University campus, Sector 14, Chandigarh
Dates: designed around 1962 (CCA, Mapin); dedicated to the nation by President S. Radhakrishnan on 1 December 1962 (Sarbjit Bahga). Some CCA drawings are dated around 1963.
Type: a centre for Gandhian studies with a library, an auditorium and a seminar room
Materials: concrete, clad in textured concrete panels; MIT's image record lists concrete, marble and sandstone
Engineer and contractor: not named in any source we could open
Status: in use by the university. A Grade-I heritage building in the Chandigarh Master Plan, according to The Tribune (2018). Getty Foundation conservation grants in 2015 (planning) and 2020 (implementation).

From the sources linked below. None we opened gives the site area, floor area or dimensions, so this post gives none.

If you are documenting the building for studio or thesis work, our guide on how to do an architecture case study sets out what a jury expects to see on your sheets.

Who designed Gandhi Bhawan: the brief and the client

Panjab University began in Lahore in 1882 and moved to its new campus in Chandigarh "during 1958-1960", according to the university's own profile page. The same page says the campus was "designed for the Panjab University by Pierre Jeanneret under the general guidance of Le Corbusier", and it calls the three-winged Gandhi Bhawan "the pride of the University" and its most artistic building.

Jeanneret was Le Corbusier's cousin. He joined Le Corbusier on Chandigarh in December 1950, according to Sarbjit Bahga's 2017 account for the World Architecture Community, and stayed in the city from February 1951 to August 1965, according to The Tribune (March 2021). The same article says he designed most of the government housing, schools, colleges and shopping centres as well as the university, and supervised the building of Le Corbusier's designs for the Capitol Complex. He died in 1967.

The brief was for a building to promote the study of Gandhi's life and ideas. Bahga describes it as established to hold study classes and discussions on Gandhi's life and works. The MIT Libraries record for G. E. Kidder Smith's photographs of around 1965 describes a centre for the dissemination of Gandhian philosophy, with a library, a seminar room and a lecture hall. The building was dedicated to the nation by Dr S. Radhakrishnan, then President of India, on 1 December 1962 (Bahga).

Credits: what the archives say

The drawings are in the Pierre Jeanneret fonds at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, which files Gandhi Bhawan as a project of around 1962. It holds presentation drawings, plans dated 1962 to 1963 and a 1962 sketch of an auditorium seat, so the furniture was designed with the building. A separate CCA photograph record credits both Pierre Jeanneret and Bhanu Prakash Mathur as architects of the Panjab University buildings shown, which include Gandhi Bhawan. Other accounts spell his name Bhanu Pratap Mathur, and we found no source that sets out his exact share. In a thesis, credit "Pierre Jeanneret, with Bhanu Prakash Mathur" and cite the CCA.

Site and context: the campus core

Bahga places Gandhi Bhawan in a pool of water on the north-east of the campus, which Panjab University says spreads across almost 550 acres in Sectors 14 and 25. It belongs to what the university calls the cultural core, with the Fine Arts Museum, the University Library and the Student Centre. The university describes the library as an RCC frame with red sandstone veneers.

That setting is the key to reading the building. Gandhi Bhawan is white, curved and pointed, and stands apart on water. Rajnish Wattas, quoted by The Tribune in 2021, describes it as all white and set against the red linear facades of the university, and says it recalls Fatehpur Sikri. On a site plan, show the pool and the neighbouring buildings: the contrast is part of the design.

Gandhi Bhawan at Panjab University seen across its pool: a pale, panel-clad concrete building with a curved wall on the left, a tall square block on the right and a roof that dips into a deep V between them, a pointed concrete form rising behind, a red door and yellow-framed glazing at the centre, the whole building reflected in still water, with the red walls of a low campus building and trees beyond — Gandhi Bhawan in September 2024, after a late-monsoon storm had filled the pool with rainwater, as the photographer notes. The white building stands apart from the red campus buildings behind it. Photo: UnpetitproleX, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Concept and design ideas: a lotus in a pond

The 2019 book Gandhi Bhawan: Documenting and Conserving India's Modern Heritage, by Shikha Jain and Vanicka Arora (Mapin, with Panjab University), says the building was designed to evoke a lotus flower afloat in a pond. It adds a second source of form: Gandhian ideals and the pinwheel toys of local children. Both ideas are visible on site. The roof planes rise to points like petals, and the three wings turn around the centre like the blades of a paper pinwheel.

Bahga gives a third reading. At the entrance is the inscription "Truth is God", and he reads the pointed forms as the sharp edge of truth and the rounded forms as harmony. The MIT record calls the form introverted: the building looks inwards to its centre rather than out to the campus.

Treat these as readings by named writers: we found no statement by Jeanneret himself about the lotus or the pinwheel.

Gandhi Bhawan plan and zoning

The plan is three wings around a centre. Bahga lists what goes where: one wing holds a library, an office and a research scholars' room; the other two hold an auditorium and a seminar room. The MIT record adds the key piece: the three wings are articulated separately and meet through interpenetrating volumes at a central exhibition space lit from above.

That gives a clear zoning diagram for a studio sheet:

Quiet wing: the library, the office and the research scholars' room, for daily work and reading.
Assembly wing: the auditorium, used for lectures and university events.
Discussion wing: the seminar room, for smaller classes.
The centre: an exhibition space where the three wings meet, lit from above.

Schematic plan of Gandhi Bhawan: three rounded wings radiate from a central circle like a pinwheel, all standing inside a large pool surrounded by campus lawns. Wing 1 holds the library, office and research scholars' room, wing 2 the auditorium and wing 3 the seminar room; the central circle is the exhibition space where the wings meet, lit from above — The plan idea: three wings for the library, auditorium and seminar room meet at a skylit centre, and the building stands in a pool. Schematic, not to scale; which wing faces which way is not shown. Diagram: MOA

Our diagram shows the idea only, not the drawn plan. For that, see the CCA's Jeanneret fonds (some drawings are digitised) and the Mapin book.

Gandhi Bhawan section and structure

In section, the building is a low base standing in shallow water, walls clad in concrete panels, and roof planes that fold and curve, which Bahga calls a lotus-shaped roof. Over the centre, light comes from above. DRONAH, the conservation firm that later prepared the plan for the building, describes curvilinear forms and column-free spaces clad in textured concrete panels.

No source we opened names the structural engineer or describes how the roof planes are supported, so our section shows only the principle.

Schematic section of Gandhi Bhawan: a low base sitting in the pool, two walls clad in concrete panels, roof planes sloping down towards the middle from both sides, and a pointed raised light over the central space with arrows of daylight falling into it. Numbered markers show where the 2018 assessment found problems: water from the pool reaching the foundation, saturated plaster at the base, dislodged cladding panels, termites at the base of the panels and structural cracks on the walls — The section idea and the problems the 2018 assessment reported: three of the five sit where the base meets the water. Schematic, not to scale. Diagram: MOA

Materials and construction

The building is concrete, and what you see outside is a skin of small rectangular panels. DRONAH describes them as textured concrete panels. Bahga says the building is finished in white marble aggregate, and that this finish has performed well in Indian conditions. The MIT record lists the materials as concrete, marble and sandstone. Read together, these point to concrete panels with a white marble aggregate face over a concrete structure, but we found no published specification of the panel mix, size or fixing.

The Mapin book reports comprehensive testing of the building's "innovative building materials": use it, not photographs, for panel sizes or mixes.

Inside, The Tribune (2018) reported that the auditorium seats were originally grey (later black), that the original wall colours were found by testing peeled surfaces, and that some glass had been replaced with fibre. A Satish Gujral mural at the front was to be restored; we show no photo of it, as it is an artwork in its own right.

For how these materials compare with what is built in the region today, see our guide to building materials in Punjab and Chandigarh.

Close view of one side of Gandhi Bhawan under a clear blue sky: a long curved wall clad in small rectangular pale concrete panels, a roof plane sweeping down into a valley and up to a sharp corner, a pointed concrete form rising behind the roof, small square openings set into the wall and a tall strip of glazing with yellow and blue frames beside a red panel, standing on a low base above a dry, paved pool floor — Gandhi Bhawan in September 2011, with the pool empty: the small cladding panels, the folded roof plane and the coloured glazing show clearly. Photo: Aleksandr Zykov from Russia, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Light, climate and services

Light is the clearest part of the climate story we can source. The central exhibition space is lit from above (MIT), so daylight reaches the middle of a building whose outer walls are mostly closed, with small openings and tall strips of coloured glazing, as the photographs show.

The pool is the other part. Bahga says it gives the building a quiet, meditative setting. We found no measurement or published claim that it cools the building, so we do not make one.

On services, The Tribune (2018) reported that the auditorium was not soundproof, that the wiring was to be replaced, that the original lighting was being revived and that Braille signage had been added.

Reception, problems and conservation

Writers on Chandigarh rate the building highly. Bahga calls it "perhaps one of the most outstanding buildings designed by Pierre Jeanneret in India". DRONAH calls it one of the select truly Modernist buildings of India. The university itself calls it its most artistic building. The architectural photographer G. E. Kidder Smith photographed it around 1965; his images are now held by MIT.

The same water that frames the building has damaged it. In October 2018, The Tribune reported that water from the P-shaped pool was damaging the foundation. Dr Manish Sharma, the faculty member in charge of the restoration project, said the pool urgently needed waterproofing. The assessment found:

the base sitting in shallow water, with several past layers of cement plaster saturated and peeling, black staining and biological growth;
exterior cladding panels dislodged or displaced, and termites at the base of the panels;
about 66 structural cracks on all elevations;
past repairs that had altered the original character.

The Getty grants and the conservation plan

In 2015 the Getty Foundation chose Gandhi Bhawan for its Keeping It Modern programme, which funds research and planning for 20th-century buildings. A Hindustan Times report of that year, reproduced by Architexturez, quotes the vice-chancellor saying Panjab University was the first institution in India to receive the grant. DRONAH gives the planning grant as US$130,000, with the work starting in August 2015.

The Tribune (2018) says work on the plan began in September 2016 in two phases: the first traced the building's design and repair history and interviewed members of the original team; the second assessed structural, surface, management and maintenance problems. The resulting plan was costed at ₹1.87 crore, of which about ₹1 crore was for waterproofing, and was submitted to Chandigarh's Special Heritage Committee because the building is listed Grade-I. The research was published in 2019 as the Mapin book.

On 15 July 2020, the Getty Foundation announced a second grant, this time for implementation, for treatment, listing the building as Pierre Jeanneret's, 1962. We could not find a published report of the work being completed, so check its current state on site before you describe it as restored.

What designers in India can take from it today

This is our reading, drawn from the sources above.

A water feature is a waterproofing job first. Gandhi Bhawan's pool is central to the design, and it is also the main source of damage. Detail the pool lining, the joint between pool and plinth, and how the pool will be drained and maintained, and price it in from the start. Our guide to waterproofing by climate covers the basics.
Watch the base of a clad wall. The panels failed where they meet wet ground: saturation, displaced panels and termites all sit at the base. Lift cladding clear of splash zones, give it a hard, drained plinth, and plan termite protection.
A small programme can carry a campus. Three rooms and a lit centre make a building that a 550-acre campus treats as its symbol. For a thesis, this is a strong typology study: a plan where each function gets its own wing and the shared space sits where they meet. Our B.Arch thesis topics by typology has related briefs.
Document before you repair. The team researched the history, interviewed the original team and tested the materials before proposing work, and found earlier repairs had harmed the original character.

Gandhi Bhawan visit: how to see it

Gandhi Bhawan is on the Panjab University campus in Sector 14, Chandigarh, and is in regular use: the university's news pages record events in the Gandhi Bhawan auditorium. We found no official page with visiting hours, so ask Panjab University's Department of Gandhian and Peace Studies before you go if you want to see inside.

In the same visit you can see the rest of Jeanneret's campus core, and in Sector 5, the house where he lived, which has been restored as a museum (The Tribune, 2021). Le Corbusier's Capitol Complex is a separate trip; our Capitol Complex case study covers it.

FAQ

Who designed Gandhi Bhawan in Chandigarh?

Pierre Jeanneret, Le Corbusier's cousin and partner, who designed most of the Panjab University campus. The Canadian Centre for Architecture also credits Bhanu Prakash Mathur as an architect of the university buildings photographed with it.

When was Gandhi Bhawan built?

It was designed around 1962 and dedicated by President S. Radhakrishnan on 1 December 1962. Some drawings in the CCA are dated around 1963.

Where is Gandhi Bhawan in Chandigarh?

On the Panjab University campus in Sector 14, in the cultural core near the University Library, the Fine Arts Museum and the Student Centre.

Why is Gandhi Bhawan built in a pool?

The building was designed to evoke a lotus flower afloat in a pond, according to the 2019 Mapin book. The pool is also its main conservation problem: in 2018 The Tribune reported water from it damaging the foundation.

Is Gandhi Bhawan a heritage building?

Yes. The Tribune reports it is a Grade-I heritage building in the Chandigarh Master Plan, and the Getty Foundation has funded both its conservation plan (2015) and its conservation work (2020). It is not one of the 17 sites in the 2016 UNESCO listing of Le Corbusier's work, whose only Indian site is the Capitol Complex.

Working on a campus or institutional building? Find an architect on MOA.

Sources

Panjab University: Profile, Brief History and Information (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Panjab University News: Declamation Contest in the Gandhi Bhawan Auditorium, 6 March 2012 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Canadian Centre for Architecture: Gandhi Bhawan, Panjab University, Sector 14, Pierre Jeanneret fonds, with an elevation, a section and a site plan for the Gandhi Bhawan (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Canadian Centre for Architecture: Photographs of some of the buildings of the Panjab University in Chandigarh (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
MIT Libraries, G. E. Kidder Smith Image Collection: Gandhi Bhawan (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
World Architecture Community: Symposium in memory of Pierre Jeanneret on his 50th death anniversary, Sarbjit Bahga, 27 November 2017 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
The Tribune: Water from pool damaging Gandhi Bhawan's foundation, Bhartesh Singh Thakur, 10 October 2018 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
The Tribune: A tribute to Jeanneret on 125th birth anniversary, Amarjot Kaur, 23 March 2021 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
DRONAH: Conservation Planning of Gandhi Bhavan (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Hindustan Times, via Architexturez: Getty grant for conservation of Gandhi Bhavan, July 2015 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Getty: Getty Foundation Announces Final Round of Keeping It Modern Architecture Conservation Grants, 15 July 2020 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Le Corbusier World Heritage: The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, the 17 sites (accessed 4 Nov 2026)
Mapin Publishing: Gandhi Bhawan: Documenting and Conserving India's Modern Heritage, Shikha Jain and Vanicka Arora, 2019 (accessed 4 Nov 2026)