Set against the stark, deliberate geometry of Chandigarh, Chandigarh Chamda Project unfolds as a study in material translation, where architecture is worn and inhabited, beyond just being a reference. With the lingering influence of Le Corbusier shaping the city’s visual grammar, fashion design student Kartik Budhiraja and photographer Aryan Solanki craft a photo series that travels the spaces between structure and softness.

At the heart of the project lies an ensemble that draws from both Punjab’s textile heritage and Chandigarh’s brutalist identity. A Khes shirt, rooted in one of the region’s most enduring handloom traditions, forms the base. Its tactile familiarity is offset by the addition of leather trims, introducing a tension between fluidity and form. This is paired with kachhera-style shorts, reinterpreted in crunch leather and constructed using a traditional box pattern, bringing an intimate, cultural garment into a contemporary, almost architectural frame. The look is completed with a satchel made from oil pull-up hide, its structure echoing the contours of the Palace of Assembly, translating civic monumentality into an object of everyday use.

Furniture, too, becomes part of this dialogue. The presence of the iconic Chandigarh chair, originally designed by Pierre Jeanneret, anchors the series within its historical context. Reimagined in buff upholstery leather, the chair features appliqué details inspired by the Assembly’s façade, collapsing boundaries between architecture, object, and garment. In doing so, it draws a quiet parallel between Jeanneret and Corbusier, allowing their design languages to converge through material rather than form alone.

Photographed across the city with muse Gurdev, the series thrives on the art of observation. Solanki’s lens lingers on surfaces capturing how they absorb and reflect the city’s rhythms. There is an intentional restraint in the framing, a refusal to overstate, allowing Chandigarh’s geometry to assert itself without intervention. Gurdev, positioned as a working man within this landscape, moves through spaces that feel both imposing and familiar, embodying the lived tension between the city’s planned modernism and its evolving, human textures.

The product is a layered visual narrative where authorship is shared. Budhiraja’s garments internalise the architecture of Chandigarh, translating its scale, proportion, and rigidity into wearable form. Solanki, in turn, situates these forms within the city’s lived reality, ensuring they remain tactile, and in motion.

In the Chandigarh Chamda Project, leather becomes a site of memory. And through it, Chandigarh is re-seen as something beyond a static icon of modernism, but as a growing and evolving space where design continues to change, shaped by those who move through it.

The team behind the Chandigarh Chamda Project:

Photographer : Aryan Solanki

Designer and concept: Kartik Budhiraja

Model : Gurdev Singh

Styling and assisting: Aditya Bharti

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