Born: 4 October 1923, India
Died: 20 September 1995
Country most active: India
Also known as: Urmila Eulie Chowdhury
Indian architect Urmila Eulie Chowdhury was a trailblazer in her field. She worked in landscape design as well as general architecture and was a collaborator in planning the design and building of the city of Chandigarh. With Pierre Jeanneret, she is also credited for the creation of the Chandigarh chair, about which the Victoria and Albert Museum wrote: “its fascinating origin story is often untold, and its designer, Eulie Chowdury, usually remains uncredited”. She adapted his work to smaller scales, possibly due to her own small stature.
As the daughter of a diplomat, Chowdhury travelled extensively growing up, and studied in Japan, Australia and the United States. She returned to India in 1951 and married a fellow architect, Jugal Kishore Chowdhury. Although it has been claimed that she was the first woman architect in modern Asia, women like Aida-Cruz Del Rosario (Philippines) were working during the same period, and others such as Perin Jamsetjee Mistri (India) and Dora Gad (Israel) preceded her by a decade or more.
Working with a team led by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (AKA Le Corbusier), Chowdhury helped plan and execute the design for Chandigarh from 1951 to 1963 and 1968 to 1970, as the link between the Jeannerets and the Indian architects and administrators. In particular, she worked on the Home Science College, the Women’s Polytechnic and ministers’ residential complexes. She served as Chief Architect on the second stage of the Chandigarh project from 1971 to 1976. She also worked as the Director of the School of Architecture of Delhi from 1963 to 1965. She was appointed the Chief State Architect of Haryana in 1970, and Chief State Architect of the State of Punjab from 1976 to 1981.
After retiring from public service in 1981, Chowdhury continued working in her own private practice, and wrote extensively for various publications like Progressive Architecture, Architectural Design and Casabella. She previously published a memoir of working with Le Corbusier, Those Were The Days.