Indian Art Deco

Even as Art Deco buildings in Indian cities get torn down, digital archival projects including social media pages documenting the style may be our only reminders of its once robust influence

- Avantika Bhuyan

Summer vacations always meant long breaks at my maternal grandmother's home in Lucknow. Even though it would be hot and sultry, we would walk around Chowk, Bada Imambara, Qaisar Bagh, Rumi Darwaza and the areas near Lucknow University to satiate the history buff in me. I considered myself fairly well informed about the city's heritage until I came across the Instagram page of Lucknow Art Deco, run by conservation architect Nishant Upadhyay, earlier this year. In all the time I'd spent in the city, I had been unaware of the deep inroads that this 100-year-old movement of architecture and design had made in Lucknow. It also shattered the belief that heritage was something that needed to be several centuries old, with tales of a distant past echoing through silent monuments.

Rather, it could be a living, breathing repository of stories of how modern Indian landscapes were shaped by a confluence of local design sensibilities and international influences.

For as long as the term Art Deco has been in my consciousness, the style has always been synonymous with South Mumbai. The fact that glimmers of it could be found in Lucknow and Delhi had never occurred to me. Just like the Lucknow Art Deco handle, it was the website and Instagram page of Deco in Delhi, started in 2020 by architects Geetanjali Sayal and Prashansa Sachdeva, that led me to an alternative view of heritage. In Delhi too, the depth and scale of the Art Deco movement—which marks its centenary this year—has come as a surprise. These aren't lone initiatives; in cities across India, architects, conservationists, heritage enthusiasts and urban evangelists are working on inventories, documentation projects, Instagram handles; they are conducting walks, and having talks and events to popularise this 100-year-old form of architecture, which combines form and functionality in such an artistic way.