Brasilia - Chandigarh

"In 1960, Brasília was celebrated as the realization of an urban-planning vision based on designs by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer. At the same time, the city of Chandigarh, rationally laid out in sectors, was taking shape according to plans by Le Corbusier. The "test-tube city" arose as an export of modernity from a Western planning euphoria that reveals utopian traits. Living with Modernity examines how modernism has been appropriated in the two cities. Commonalities and differences are identified while images of everyday urban life are showcased in photographs by the acclaimed photographer Iwan Baan. In his engaging essay EX NIHILO: A Tale of Two Cities the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom reflects on the city as a man-made environnement and describes how these drawn-up concentrations of human beings are changed and claimed by their inhabitants as their own over time."