P.N. Thapar

Prem Nath Thapar CIE, ICS (13 April 1903– 1969) was a member of the Indian Civil Service in the Punjab region during India's transformation from a British colony to independent nation state.

Thapar joined the India Civil Service (ICS) in 1926 after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from Oxford University. His first position was as Deputy Commissioner, Settlement Officer and Colonization Officer from 1926–1941. He was named Joint Secretary in the Department of Information and Broadcasting in 1941. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in the 1944 Birthday Honours list, and was appointed Secretary of the Department of Food and Civil Supplies for the Punjab Government in 1946. In 1947 he was named the Commissioner of the Lahore and Jalandhar Divisions. With the allocation of Lahore to Pakistan in 1947, this position became moot and Thapar found himself overseeing the first planned city in India.

Thapar was chosen to serve as the administrative head of the Chandigarh Capital Project in 1949, at the very beginning of the projects conception. Thapar, working with P.L. Varma, chose the site for the new capital of Punjab via aircraft reconnaissance in the spring of 1948.

Thapar and Varma also led the selection of architects for the new city. Their initial proposal of architect to the Punjab government in December 1949 was Albert Mayer, an American town planner who teamed with Matthew Nowicki to plan the new city. The death of Nowicki in an August 1950 plane crash led Mayer to withdraw from the project and caused Thapar and Varma to go to Europe in search of a new architect in the fall of 1950.

Thapar and Varma agreed that the design of Chandigarh should represent a new, modern idiom of design, not beholden to Indian traditions but instead thoroughly modern. Thapar in particular was emphatic that they should find a good modern architect not bound by an established style. Budget constraints led them to confine their search for an architect to soft money areas of Europe.

On the recommendation of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, who were eventually hired to design housing for the city, they went to Paris to interview Le Corbusier in November 1950. Although Le Corbusier initially rejected their proposal, he sent them to visit the Masion d' Unite as an example of his work. Thapar's initial reaction to the design was negative, because the high-rise structure and reliance on elevators was incompatible with the typical Indian style of living. When Le Corbusier eventually accepted the project, Thapar ensured that the avoidance of high rise structures was part of Corbusier's design contract.

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