Have a Deco

A new illustrated notebook celebrates one of Mumbai’s most famous architectural styles

The Art Deco buildings of South Mumbai define the city’s architectural landscape just like palatial aristocratic buildings do the same for North Kolkata, though the latter have started resembling Miss Havisham’s crumbling house from Great Expectations, with time. Mumbai’s Art Deco structures have been relatively better maintained, ever since they started dotting the skyline just over a decade before Independence, when an aspirational class of wealthy entrepreneurs combined the emerging availability of concrete with then-modern design sensibilities to set themselves apart from the rest of the city’s population.

A new illustrated notebook called Deco in Blue now pays tribute to this defining architectural style, which started fading out after 1950. Art Deco Mumbai Trust is launching it, and one of their interns, Tarini N Gandhi, a design student who is now studying in the US, drew selected buildings in places like Oval Maidan, Marine Drive and Shivaji Park in blue. Why blue? “Because the city has this unique infatuation with the colour. If someone takes an aerial shot during the monsoon [when tarpaulin sheets blanket the buildings here], it would almost seem as if the whole of Mumbai is colour-coded in blue,” says Atul Kumar, a trustee of the Art Deco Mumbai Trust.    

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