The Art Deco Centenary – 1925-2025

As we step into 2025, the celebrations for the Art Deco Centenary begin. With over 1350 Art Deco buildings documented across the city’s south to north axis, the style is arguably the architecture that has shaped modern Bombay.^[1] To date, it is visible across every imaginable building typology in the city, including educational institutions, cinemas, residential neighbourhoods, office buildings, even petrol stations. As we enter the Centenary year, join us at events, exhibitions, lectures, walks and many more programs to celebrate and appreciate the style seen and loved across Mumbai.

To begin this year of commemoration, we present our centenary-inspired logo.

Each element in this logo has been designed to reflect the essence of Bombay’s Art Deco. The digits are drawn from buildings seen around the city, showcasing speed lines and circles to evoke a sense of motion; alongside the wave pattern — a signature tropical Deco motif that acknowledges the sea and how it has influenced Bombay.

The 1925 Paris Exposition

A 100 years ago, from April to October in 1925, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels was organised by the French government. A 55-acre site was constructed in central Paris, on either side of the river Seine.^[2] For months, this site displayed designs in the decorative arts, painting, sculpture, and more. Twenty one nations and French colonies were present, bringing their own sensibilities and interpretations to the Exposition’s brief for all designs to be exclusively modern. The style that eventually emerged from this fair is what we retrospectively know as ‘Art Deco’. ^[3]

In the wake of the First World War, this exposition became a means of creative expression through design for various participating nations. Many of the motifs and decorative elements eventually made popular by Art Deco depicted hope and optimism – like the frozen fountain, denoting “eternal life”, by French sculptor Renee Lalique.^[4] It also became an amalgamation of many influences, sourced from contemporary trends like the Machine Age, Bauhaus and Futurism, Jazz, etc; as well as “exotic” locales and cultures like Egypt, Ancient Mesopotamia, the Aztecs, and more.^[5]

Defining the style in simple terms often presents several challenges. Some characterise it as the playful and geometric style seen in Paris following the First World War, while another camp argues for the streamlined, modernistic American style of the 1930s to be labelled Deco.^[6] Perhaps, it is simpler to define it by what it is not. Art Deco represented a break from the ornamentation of the Beaux-Arts school, popularly seen in European town planning in the 19th century.^[7] While still decorative, it embodied the modern world of the machine age, drawing extensively from the notion of speed and mobility. With the expansion of new modes of travel in the early 20th century – high-speed trains, airplanes, ocean liners – the incorporation of images of speed became common.^[8] As a style of the machine age, Art Deco is also defined by its distinguished use of new materials like glass, steel, concrete, and bakelite, to name a few. New York and Chicago, for instance, witnessed skyscrapers of audacious heights made possible by the tensile strength of steel.

In Bombay, the emergence of Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC) coincided with the arrival of Art Deco in the 1930s, allowing for rapid building activity. It presented an opportunity to move away from the ornate Gothic buildings of the previous century, which predominantly used stone as a building material. In contrast, Art Deco became a cleaner, simpler and relatively inexpensive option for Bombay residents, taking on a mass appeal as it proliferated across the growing city. While decorative, it also put a premium on function and comfort, factoring in climate-responsive elements like eyebrows and balconies onto building facades.^[9]

While World Fairs were a common occurrence in early 20th century Europe, the global significance of the 1925 Exposition can be seen in the Art Deco style manifesting in different geographies of the world, and taking on a life of its own in each location. The complications of giving it a simple definition is also a marker of this global popularity, as the style changed and shifted as it encountered “national preferences, cultural differences, and social and economic forces.”^[10] It was not limited to architecture, but spread across fields of industrial design, fashion, textile, jewellery, furniture, and films.

A 100 years later, the world returns to Paris to celebrate the Centennial, at the World Congress on Art Deco in October 2025. Join us in this ode to the design style that changed the aesthetic trajectory of the modern world, and remains relevant today as a timeless classic.

If you would like a quick heads up on the style, here are our resources for you.

If you enjoy long form:

- Expressions of Modernity: Semiotic Isotopy on Bombay’s Backbay Reclamation Buildings
- An Architecture of Style, Not Ideology: Popular Criticisms of Art Deco

Shorter essays:

The ABCs of Art Deco:

- A Deco Dictionary
- Deco Decoded

If you just prefer Videos:

Header Image: Pavilion of the French department store ‘Galeries Lafayette’ at the 1925 Exposition. Source: Public Domain