, originally uploaded by purpleganesh.
Until my trip to Miami in late 2007, my relationship to Art Deco was distantly academic. It was just one more style..something I was more amused with when my ex-boss toiled over the minutiae in elevation design recreating his inner art deco in twenty first century bay area streetscape. The theatres and older mansions of Chennai and Mumbai somehow faded in the background….till my trip to Miami. Amid sweltering heat, and the humid salty air from the gulf, the overdose of Art Deco buildings in the historic district instantly resonated with familiar visual memories of older neighborhoods in Chennai. A recreation of T.Nagar and Mylapore minus the dust and the grime, with roads twice their Indian widths. You can almost believe, maybe Chennai might have looked like this seventy years ago…until you confront the battery of bikini clad blondes and brunettes making their way to the beach !!!
