Abstract:

The intent of this PhD research is to critically examine the language of Bombays Art Deco architecture from 1930 to 1949 in order to develop a semiotic to read meaning into its form. Current research is largely historical, and tends to look at Bombays architecture during this period as a transitory phase in the larger history of practice before National Statehood. By retrospectively describing this architecture as Art Deco (a term from the 1960s), this period has been studied as a stylistic label, with the baggage of colonialism and revivalism weighing it down. What has not been researched so far are the buildings themselves- as primary texts; independent of the aforementioned baggage. This PhD research is an attempt to occupy that space. In examining the facades of cinema houses, office buildings and apartment buildings of the period 1930-1949 the aim was to read these buildings as the billboards of their age, as metonymic representations of the whole, to research into these buildings as rich semiotic/semantic texts. Here, these buildings are looked at as objects in themselves and semiotic congruency is sought in the buildings of Bombay during the 1930s and 1940s. The processes, methods and tools adopted are semiotic, and the objects/buildings examined and analyzed synchronously and (largely) from an ahistoric standpoint. A detailed review was made of the available literature on the architecture of the period.This allowed for the clear establishment of gaps in the literature available with an aim to gain valuable results in terms of semiotic meanings and readings of architecture.Bombays buildings of the 1930s and the 1940s were studied as signifiers, to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the buildings of that period, extracting semiotic meaning in order to complement and take forward current historical research on the subject. In order to observe these buildings as texts, the facades were seen as actants with intra- and inter-objectual relations (Mattozzi,2007). Inventories were created and populated with facades of cinema houses, apartment buildings and office buildings of Bombay (and outside Bombay, selectively) constructed during the period under study. Eleanor Rosch speaks of best examples of conceptual categories that are rich, imagistic, sensory, full-bodied mental events that serve as reference points (1999). These properties are used to generate an exemplar. Based on the determination of exemplars, a bundle of features or Basic Objects were derived, and then validated for proximity. The identification of Basic Objects so created allowed for a return to the positioning of the exemplar derived from Uday Athavankars model of graded membership based on a ‘shared features’ notion of categorization(1990). This resulted in the agglomeration of objects with the most frequently associated features around the central member, while other objects where the feature were seen with lesser frequency trailed off to an indistinct boundary. Findings derived from the analyses were re-contextualised in the historical discourse and conclusions drawn from this. This has shone new light into the practice of Art Deco architecture in Bombay as a discourse of social production and consumption. The need for locating the conclusions of this research in the larger context of architectural discourse was felt. Practical implications for future users/ readers were spelt out. This research has produced a better understanding of Art Deco architecture in Bombay as significant producers of meaning. The findings and conclusions contribute to the architectural history of pre-independence Bombay and India, Art Deco architecture and building facades, and offers methods for any future semiotic analyses in architecture. The humble assertion is that this research has made significant contributions to the field of architectural design and historical research.