Mumbai's Architectural Treasures
Eros Cinema, Soona Mahal, Empress Court. These names immediately transport you to Mumbai and its treasure trove of Art Deco buildings. For those unfamiliar with the term Art Deco—yet familiar with Mumbai—fuzzy images of Marine Drive or the Oval with their charming old buildings will come to mind. Those rounded corners, snazzy metal grills, and curious plasterwork patterns have an allure that's hard to miss. They hark back to a different age, an age connected with jazz and black-and-white movies. (Who can forget 'Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan' from CID with Marine Drive as a backdrop?)

In the past decade or more, Mumbai citizens have recognized their unique value and brought both recognition and legislation to bear on the city's Art Deco heritage. With all the attention it is getting in that city, it's easy to believe that only Mumbai has these architectural gems. Would it surprise you to know that there might be Art Deco buildings lurking in every neighborhood across India?

Understanding Art Deco
First, perhaps a little about Art Deco. What exactly was this style? Why did it become popular in India when its provenance was in Paris, a continent away? Let's dive right in.

A hundred years ago, the French government organized an exhibition in Paris to showcase modern design from nations across the world. This was the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels. From April to October 1925, thousands flocked to attend this massive exposition sited next to the river Seine. Interestingly, this style was not known as Art Deco at that time. It was called by other names, like Style Moderne, Moderne, Modernistic, or Style Contemporain, and was not recognized as a distinct and homogenous style. Many years later, in 1966, in an exhibition covering the major styles of the 1920s and 1930s, the term 'Arts Décoratif' was shortened to Art Deco, and the name stuck.

A Style of Contradictions
This was a style that was chameleonic in its sensibility. As Art Deco expert Alistair Duncan put it, a style whose 'sole common denominator appeared to be its contradictory characteristics'. It broke away from the ornamental Gothic or Beaux-Arts style that was then prevalent in Europe, and yet there were strong decorative elements from those styles in its vocabulary. It sought to be sleek and modern, and yet had the stout bearing of its predecessors. It incorporated historical motifs and forms from 'exotic' cultures like Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China, and yet aspired to be modern. It broke away from the Art Nouveau style that preceded it, and yet it absorbed the style's curvilinear and flowing elements.

Everything you could say about Art Deco, its opposite was equally valid. Despite such contradictions, its influence on everything—from fonts to jewelry and clothing, to ships and cars, to furniture, interior design and skyscrapers, to everyday objects such as radios—was enormous. It was also a movement closely connected with an appreciation for the decorative arts, which had only then started being validated as an art form.

The Birth of a Movement
There was a decadence and irreverence to Art Deco that never gave it the heft that the Modernist style possessed. Perhaps it had something to do with the time that it came into being. Imagine Europe in the period spanning the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. There was a brief lull after the constant wars between its member states. Many great powers, like France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Belgium were reaping the fruits of the Industrial Revolution and colonial exploitation. There was optimism in the air because of economic growth and intellectual liberation.

The growth of travel and interest in other cultures led to a great exchange between countries of the world, especially from the colonies to imperialist Europe. There was also popular interest in archaeology due to excavations at Pompeii, Troy, and the tomb of the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Art Deco also used the clashing colors of Fauvism and the abstract forms of Cubism. It took ideas from the high fashion vocabulary of the period, which featured geometric designs, chevrons, zigzags, and stylized bouquets of flowers. Art Deco buildings were constructed using new materials like reinforced concrete and steel. This led to the birth of a style that was emblematic of those times.

Evolution and Adaptation
In the initial period, Art Deco was characterized by the use of luxurious materials like marble, gold, ivory, crystal, and exotic woods and metals. Technological advances such as human flight and the personal automobile brought with them both a new way of life and an aesthetic that was radically different. The style then absorbed these Machine Age influences and morphed into something more sleek and streamlined, sometimes even exhibiting nautical elements such as portholes and mastheads. A sense of movement was emphasized in many of its details.

New materials in the construction industry were enthusiastically adopted to create skyscrapers such as the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building. Ornamentation was distinctive, with an exuberance that was never seen in later periods.

Global Spread
All these refinements and changes were happening across Europe, but clearly Art Deco was not limited to the place of its birth. It spread to the Americas, prominently to the US and Cuba. As intercontinental travel became more frequent, visitors from countries like India, Indonesia, and China took back with them the stylistic elements and adapted them to their own countries. In tropical countries like India, and even in the hotter climate of Florida in the US, a different architecture emerged that was more responsive to the climate of those regions.

Art Deco Arrives in India
India was under British rule at that time, but in the 1930s, homegrown architects were graduating from the JJ School in Bombay. Many of the cities were growing, and with the pressure of migration, construction was booming. The upper class were eager to embrace a more westernized lifestyle with modern amenities and ways of planning. Multi-dwelling apartments started appearing slowly in cities like Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. The plans of these homes reveal a mélange of Indian and Western ideas—homes with a living room, a dining room, and bedrooms, but often with the bathrooms at the rear, reminiscent of the outhouse of the older style detached Indian house.

Indian Art Deco: A Unique Expression
Somehow Art Deco fit right in because of its adaptability to the Indian milieu, giving rise to an aesthetic that was clearly connected to a tropical climate and entirely distinct from the place of its birth. Large roof overhangs, 'eyebrows and eyelids' (chajjas), and balconies became distinct features of this manifestation. You still saw the sweeping curves, speedlines, intricate metal grillwork, and motifs in plasterwork, but they had taken on an Indian avatar.

Art Deco in India was characterized by bright colors, jaalis, red oxide and terrazzo flooring, and ornamentation with clear Indian characteristics. Religious motifs like the Om, Saraswati figurines, and swastikas can be found in many buildings of this time. In fact, it is astonishing how the style spread through the length and breadth of the country. Modernism would slowly make its presence felt, especially with the coming of Corbusier and the construction of Chandigarh, but in the 1940s and 1950s, Art Deco was very much the style du jour.

Decline and Persistence
Meanwhile in Europe and the rest of the Western world, after World War II, Art Deco was being replaced by the International Style. It was pioneered by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, and the alumni and students of the Bauhaus, many of whom migrated to the US, taking along with them ideas of Modernism. Art Deco began being seen as an effete style with a superficial contribution to architecture. The style largely vanished, except in fields like printmaking and industrial design, where it continued to be used in automobile styling and products such as jukeboxes.

But it flourished for another two decades in countries across the non-Western world such as Cuba, India, and Indonesia, and in each place, it took on local features and morphed into a distinctive style. By the 1960s, Modernism had encompassed the whole world, and training in architecture became largely premised on the International Style. Art Deco disappeared.

A Century Later
It made its appearance every now and then through the years, but it was never able to break the stranglehold of the Modern style. In the past few years, interest in the style seems to have revived, and in 2025, it has been piqued considerably as Art Deco hits a century. It has been a hundred years since this unorthodox yet influential style made its appearance, and from the looks of it, it's not going anywhere. Art Deco will stay with the world for all time to come, delighting us with its irreverence and quirky detailing.