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In 2015, the Bengali author and critic Amit Chaudhuri wrote in The Guardian that, “Calcutta’s architecture is unique. Its destruction is a disaster for the city.” In the article, the author pointed out that many buildings and family homes constructed in Kolkata (then Calcutta) in the 1930s and '40s show distinct design elements starkly in contrast with the city’s colonial-era neoclassical architecture: semi-circular balconies; long, vertical strip comprising glass panes for the stairwell; porthole-shaped windows; and radiating sunrise motifs on grilles and gates.
All these are features of a decorative architectural style known as ‘Art Deco’ which became popular in the cities of Europe and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although the nomenclature ‘Art Deco’ itself does not have a definitive origin, it is often attributed to the Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, and writer Le Corbusier who used the term when writing about the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925 for his journal L’Esprit Nouveau.
The characteristic features of Art Deco designs reflect admiration for the modernity of the Machine Age and for the inherent design qualities of machine-made objects like relative simplicity, planarity, symmetry, and unvaried repetition of elements. Art Deco designs often showcase simple, clean shapes, usually with a streamlined look; ornament that is geometric or stylised from representational forms such as florals, animals, and sun-rays; and use of man-made substances, including plastics, vita-glass, and reinforced concrete, often combined with natural materials like jade, silver, ivory, and chrome.
Internationally, Art Deco designs reflected the rapid artistic and technological advancements of the inter-war period, incorporating chic elegance, eclectic historical and national imagery, and Machine Age forms into an effervescent decorative vision. Originating in a time of intense aesthetic experimentation and art movements such as the Bauhaus, Constructivism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Modernism, Art Deco design exemplified opulent consumption, crass commercialism, and the accelerating pace of contemporary life.
In Kolkata, however, the movement towards Art Deco aesthetics emerged as a rejection of British neoclassicism prevalent in the city’s colonial-era architecture. In the post-war, post-Independence period, as refugees from Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) migrated to Kolkata and people increasingly moved towards the then-developing southern part of the city, they also moved away from the city’s colonial-era aesthetics and visual identity.
The first of these new, modernist Art Deco buildings came up in 1935, when the American film production company Metro Goldwyn Mayer opened the Metro Cinema Hall in Esplanade. With its cascading waterfall-style columns, grand staircases, and neon lights, the Metro Cinema became an instant symbol of the city’s growing Bengali middle-class aspirations. The newly-affluent Bengalis began incorporating many of these features in their homes. Soon, the term ‘metro-bari’ (Bengali for ‘metro-house’) became a colloquialism for Art Deco-inspired residential architecture in the city.
A significant number of these Art Deco-style family homes are still standing across South Kolkata neighbourhoods like Southern Avenue, Jodhpur Park, Lake Gardens, Dover Lane, South End Park, Lake Terrace, Keyatala, and Purna Das Road. Although Mumbai is often recognised as the second city of Art Deco architecture in the world after Chicago, Kolkata’s Art Deco homes are still largely unacknowledged as part of the city’s architectural heritage. Ironically, this is not because Kolkatans don’t know about these Art Deco buildings, but because they were once so commonplace in the city that people do not think of them as places worth preserving.
In recent years, however, several pressure groups and civil society members have come forward to document these buildings and advocate for their preservation. Instagram profiles like Calcutta Houses and Calcutta Art Deco and pressure groups like Amit Chaudhuri’s Calcutta Architectural Legacies are working to conserve what’s left of Kolkata’s Art Deco heritage.
