The blockbuster edition of Art Deco Alive! brings to life the style, influence, and lasting legacy of the centennial Art Deco Movement by bridging the twin coastlines of Miami and Mumbai
A visitor browses a section of the curation on display at Miami
This writer recalls the distinct impact of seeing the grey stone friezes of the New India Assurance Building in Fort for the first time. Imposing, sombre, and yet captivating. Smiti Kanodia, founder of Art Deco Alive! recognises the feeling. “We grew up in this city. I studied at JB Petit [High School for Girls], and would hop across to shop at Fashion Street,” she recalling a memory, over a Zoom phone call.
Proposed Design for Karfule Petrol Station, Mumbai. The still functioning petrol pump is a sterling example of the bold use of RCC. Pic Courtesy/ Karfule Archives; Art Deco Mumbai Trust
The founder is busy preparing for the Mumbai chapter of Art Deco Alive! Ocean Drive to Marine Drive: Mapping a Century of Art Deco | Miami Beach-Mumbai (1925-2025) a three-week-long festival that will celebrate the centenary of an architectural movement whose legacy spreads across the globe, and mediums from architecture to design, art, music, and films.
Mumbai’s own Deco
It was on her family trip to Miami a couple of years ago that the impact of this turn-of-the-century moment truly dawned on Kanodia. “It felt so familiar, like being back at Marine Drive. When I visited the Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL), the museum for the Miami Art Deco Heritage, I realised how they had preserved and articulated the history for the future. It prompted me to work on something similar for our own streets and the city,” she reveals.
Miami Beach Post Office is a splendid example of Art Deco design for a Public Utility building. Pics Courtesy/ Miami Design Preservation League; Art Deco Alive!
Miami, like Mumbai, is a tropical city with a vast coastline; its low-rise structures defined by geometric shapes. Like Mumbai, the Art Deco heritage in Miami also faced the challenge of destruction till citizens like Barbara Capitman stepped in to set up the MDPL. “In fact, I recently learned that the definitive pastel colours of the buildings in Miami were a concerted effort to protect them, by making them look beautiful,” shares Kanodia.
A custom-made silver Art Deco tea set that was part of the bridal trousseau of Dharmendrakumari of the Limbdi royal family, who later became the Yuvrani of Kathiwada. Objects such as these were often commissioned by royal families, important patrons of the Art Deco Movement. Pic Courtesy/Kathiwada Royal Family Collection
With co-founders Salma Merchant Rahmathulla and Gayatri Hingorani Dewan anchoring the Miami chapter, Kanodia reached out to Mumbai’s institutions to celebrate the centenary. The first edition in Mumbai will witness the MDPL step in as collaborators along with some of the city’s iconic institutions from the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Art Deco Mumbai, Gaylord restaurant, Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, among others. “We have over 80 collaborators who stepped in,” shares Kanodia.
Globally Indian
While it emerged in 1925 Paris, the Art Deco found a new grammar and visual style in erstwhile Bombay. Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, managing trustee and founder, Dr BDL Museum, informs us, “In the 1930s, as Bombay rebuilt itself after plague, famine, and depression, the city embraced Art Deco as a symbol of modernity, health, and optimism. It shaped the city’s growing need for new residences, as well as spaces for leisure and entertainment.”
A view of Eros Cinema. File Pic/Kirti Surve Parade
The immediacy of the ideas, and their designs made them a part of everyday life. Other than structures like Eros Cinema and Regal Theatre buildings that became community hubs, the movement also influenced jewellery, fashion, furniture, art, and even cinema.
The founder has a soft spot for typefaces and grilles. “I recently learned that some of the Art Deco fonts were named after buildings or architects, like the Empire State Deco font.” Kanodia says. “The movement’s impact on furniture, graphic design, jewellery, objects and fashion is less often recognised. Art Deco became a fluid, adaptable visual language that marked a shift away from the ornate Victorian aesthetic toward modern, streamlined forms,” Mehta elaborates.
Immersed in Deco
(From left) Smiti Kanodia and Henry Hohauser features prominently as a pioneering Art Deco architect from Miami in the exhibition, Ocean Drive to Marine Drive: Mapping a Century of Deco | Miami Beach - Mumbai (1925 - 2025)
This diversity is the reason behind a multi-faceted programme curation. “It is only when we make people aware of all aspects of Art Deco that we offer them the choice of picking how they embrace it, and what they choose to protect,” says Kanodia.
Salma Merchant Rahmathulla and Gayatri Hingorani Dewan
The two-week long curation delves into events from Churchgate Street (today’s Veer Nariman Road) walks to guided exhibit tours, pop up exhibits and lecture symposiums; building an immersive experience of elements as diverse as architecture, music, cinema, and typefaces. The BDL Museum will play a crucial role in enabling this spread of information. “They offer public access to people who might not always experience Deco in the way you or I do,” Kanodia says.
Conversations for the future
Tasneem Zakaria Mehta
Apart from the experiences, the event, Kanodia says, hopes to act as a bridge for conversations. “One of the things we would like to do, and are hoping to, is to bring real estate developers, citizens, urban planners and preservationists together to discuss how we want to view our city in the future. The idea is to look at it through a collaborative roadmap for the future, rather than for or against,” she says. With the city rapidly making and remaking itself, that conversation might be crucial to the survival of these edifices.
FROM November 6 to 25
AT Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Byculla; also across different city venues
LOG ON TO @artdecoalive; artdecoalive.org (for full schedule)
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
