India, Part IV: Moderninism in a Guilded Cage

The Modern Architecture that I studied was void of ornament to the extent that only mass produced furniture expressing the industrial aesthetic was allowed, a rule that has been ignored by Indian designers ever since Modernism arrived on home shores, and resulting in the decoration of everyday homes with ethnic abandon.  The affect is fascinating and there are often happy accidents, like the fact that Eastern Style furniture arrangements, where the seating is place symmetrically around a table in the middle of the room, fit perfectly into a modernist box, or how concrete floors provide a perfect base for local marble, or how window and door penetrations require decorative grill work to keep the monkeys  out and allow the air to flow in, or how site cast concrete moldings and plaster walls demand colored paint and gilding like a bride at her wedding.