Art Deco Bombay: the Radical Re-imagination of the City through its Aesthetics

by Mustansir Dalvi

A new aesthetic was born at the turn of the twentieth century Bombay; it was the result of new materials and technologies. A new semiotic was adapted to make it as Asia’s foremost Art Deco city, all appropriated by the first generation of architects educated in India.

Professor of Architecture at the Sir JJ College of Architecture, author of ‘The Past as Present: pedagogical practices in architecture at the Bombay School of Art’ (Sir JJ/UDRI, 2016) and editor of ‘20th Century Compulsions’ (Marg, 2016); interested in charting urban transformations and their semiotics.