In 1925, a new design and architectural style blazed a way across the world, leaving its legacy in cities as geographically apart as New York and Miami in the United States, Casablanca in Morocco, Valencia in Spain, Asmara in Eritrea, and Mumbai.
The year 2025 marks the centenary of the Art Deco style, which emerged at the Paris Industrial Exposition in 1925. Architects call the exhibition a ‘pivotal moment in the history of design in the modern world’.
As the style traveled across the world, colonial Mumbai was one of the cities where Art Deco found expression in office buildings, apartments, cinema halls, petrol stations, and even film sets. By the time the style ebbed away in the 1950s, Mumbai has the second-highest number of Art Deco buildings in the world, next to Miami, United States.
To commemorate the centenary of the style, Art Deco Mumbai Trust, which chronicles and helps the conservation of Mumbai’s Art Deco architectural heritage, has created a logo that are the hallmarks of Mumbai’s Art Deco, like lines, waves, and circles. The group describes the logo as their ode to the design movement which altered the world and shaped modern Bombay
Atul Kumar, founder trustee of Art Deco Mumbai Trust, said that the organisation has documented 1392 buildings over six years of field work across the city.
Art Deco Mumbai Trust helps owners and residents of the buildings to enlist them in the repair plans for the structures so that special architectural features are not lost during the work. “Our repair and restoration practice has worked on 15 buildings of which nine were implemented,” said Kumar.
The city’s Art Deco aficionados are working against time to save the heritage. Many Art Deco buildings in localities like Matunga, Shivaji Park, and the suburbs have given way to high-rise structures. “Mumbai is in the throes of large-scale redevelopment. The focus is on vertical growth,” said Kumar.
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The Art Deco style gained popularity from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes à Paris.
Mumbai has documented 1392 Art Deco buildings.
Marine Drive and the Oval Maidan have Mumbai’s largest collection of such buildings.
The buildings along the Oval Maidan are part of the UNESCO-listed ‘Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai’.
Mumbai evolved its style of Art Deco to suit its tropical weather, with the buildings featuring balconies.
Apart from buildings along Marine Drive and Oval Maidan, the Regal and Eros cinemas, the New India Assurance Building on Mahatma Gandhi Road, the Karfule petrol pump, and Ballard Estate are other examples of Art Deco buildings.
The style has been replicated in the interiors of some multiplex cinemas in Mumbai. Apart from buildings, the style influenced furniture, jewelry, decor, and arts.
