To understand it, one must look up and gaze at the buildings veiled by the soot of smog and time. Then venture into the less touristy but more lived-in streets of its bustling southern heart, Colaba, bustling and busy by day, melancholic by night. The Mumbai we know today was once an agglomeration of islands, seven to be precise, ruled by local sovereigns until the arrival of the Portuguese and then the British, who began connecting these islets – the southernmost being called Colaba.
Colaba
This is the neighborhood where some of the city’s most famous monuments and buildings are concentrated, like the Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal Hotel. However, it is above all the kingdom of Indian Art Deco. A few months ago, a new edition of the famous Bombay Deco was released, a work by the late historian Sharada Dwivedi and the great architect Rahul Mehrotra. They assert that the city’s rise of the movement, which occurred just after the end of the First World War, coincided with a period when local businesses began to flourish, and owners wanted to showcase their buildings, capable of rivaling the sumptuous residences that, in those same years, were built to host the city residences of various Indian royal families and the new nobility: the cinematic one, a glamorous product of the burgeoning Hindi film industry.
Thus, alongside the Gothic-Victorian Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, the station the world still remembers for the final dance of Slumdog Millionaire, hundreds of Art Deco buildings rise, condensed between SP Mukherjee Chowk, Oval Maidan, and Marine Drive. Such a large group makes Mumbai the second-largest collection of Art Deco buildings after Miami. To find them, just stroll down Marine Drive (look for Riviera Villa, Chateau Marine, Soona Mahal) or drive by taxi along the western flank of the great park and cricket ground of Oval Maidan (Green Fields or Empress Court).
Residences with a monolithic appearance, softened by high ceilings and undulating balconies open to the outside. And then the decorations: nautical symbols, tropical flora and fauna, stylized fountains, and geometric patterns in terracotta, stucco, cement, smooth stone, and opaque glass. Inside, the traditional geometric tiles of the historic Bharat Tiles survive today in the Laxmi Insurance Building at Chandni Chowk. They have also reappeared in the Garden Chalet, home to the most beloved restaurant of the moment, Neuma, just a few steps from the stalls of Colaba Causeway and the city’s oldest cinema, another Art Deco gem: the Regal.
The Art Districts
If the Indian art market boom has long been awaited, it’s thanks to Mumbai. Artistic movements, openings, new museum spaces, and innovations in art consumption have been and continue to be the order of the day. Here lies the artistic legacy of MF Husain, Raza, and FN Souza, who in the 1940s founded the Progressive Artists’ Group, as well as galleries born a few years after Independence, like the historic Jehangir Art Gallery, founded in 1952, alongside spaces that today redraw the city map, such as 47-A or the Nmacc. It starts again from Colaba and its surroundings, where the calendar is a succession of themed festivals: Art Mumbai, Mumbai Gallery Weekend, Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. It’s no coincidence: the city’s main art galleries are condensed within a few kilometers.
In Kala Ghoda, there’s the always crowded Jehangir Art Gallery, while in the Fort district, in an iconic red brick building, the exclusive TARQ has moved: a few steps away is another institution of Mumbai art, Chemould Prescott Road. Turning back, opposite the Regal, are the doors of Akara, which in Colaba has two spaces, one (Akara Modern) dedicated to modern art and the other (Akara Contemporary) focused on new generations. On the opposite side, facing the Taj hotel, are Jhaveri Contemporary, whose program embraces the South Asian diaspora, and aequo, India’s first collectible design gallery, while inside the iconic hotel is DAG, with its nod to Indian modernism. Heading south, you come across Experimenter, a branch of one of Calcutta’s most important galleries, then Gallery XXL, specializing in street art, and Sakshi Gallery, where you can find valuable emerging artists. Finally, Nature Morte, the most famous gallery in Delhi’s capital (and perhaps the entire nation), which opened in Mumbai just a year ago.
Kotachiwadi
It is precisely the new art spaces that have redefined the urban fabric of the city in the last handful of years. Let’s start with Khotachiwadi and the man who embodies it, fashion designer James Ferreira. We are talking about a neighborhood near the lively Chowpatty beach, but enclosed by such a network of alleys to preserve its entrance from cars. When you enter, you enter another space, another time: born as a Koli fishing village, here gathered the first Christian communities of eastern India, who built their homes in the characteristic Portuguese style, all pastel colors, sloping roofs, wooden verandas – a memory of the pre-English colonial past. Ferreira has created his atelier here, a wunderkammer of fabrics and craftsmanship, and has given new vigor to the neighborhood with the opening of 47-A, a gallery dedicated to design by the founders of another city icon, the Chatterjee & Lal gallery in Colaba.
Bandra Kurla Complex
Among the many suburbs of Mumbai, Bandra has always been the most posh. If Colaba collects the historic elite in the south, in the more hipster Bandra, among trendy bars and residential skyscrapers, emerging creativity gravitates: here live writers and designers, Bollywood personalities, and startupers. Outside its glam boundaries, heading towards the nearby Kurla area, arrives the surprise. Where just a few decades ago there was nothing but marshland, the Bandra Kurla Complex, or BKC, was planned to host multinationals, hotels, banking groups, and shopping centers. Situated at the edge of the city outskirts, it is loved by the metropolitan middle class, who fully live the Jio World Drive, a complex that houses only restaurants, high-end boutiques, and the Nmacc, the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Center (named after the powerful industrial family that created it), a space to promote national heritage in art, film, music, dance, and theater, today considered one of Asia’s most interesting platforms.
Urban Design
Straddling the two poles of Mumbai, the southern one (Colaba) and the central-northern one (BKC), are strategically positioned some of the most representative Italian design brands. Starting from the latter, in the nearby area of Lower Parel are Molteni and Porro. Just a little further away, in Worli, Rimadesio has found a home, not far from Poliform. Between the retro-flavored alleys of the Fort area, near Kala Ghoda, you find the stores of Poltrona Frau and Minotti. There isn’t a real design district in the city – the latest editions of the main city furniture fairs have mostly been hosted in ad hoc spaces at the Jio Center. But furniture brands have followed the city trend, occupying the places that in recent years have witnessed more vibrant urban development.
