How New York could see its reflections in Dharavi

Art Deco will be the architectural style of the rehabilitation buildings
when the Rs 10,000-cr makeover of Asia's largest slum takes off
Kavitha Iyer

Mumbai, September 24: Style statements couldn't be further apart than the
Empire State Building, New York, and Dharavi, Mumbai. Yet, they could soon
speak the same visual language-Art Deco, the style fashionable in the 1930s
and 1940s and which gives Mumbai's Queen's Necklace its elite apartment
buildings.

And, while many officers of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority-it is
undertaking the Rs 10,000-crore Dharavi Redevelopment Project-might not
fully appreciate the nuances of Art Deco or its evolution, the government
body's Expression of Interest documents that are to be released very soon
anyway mention it as the design form developers are to adhere to. While the
buildings comprising the free sale component can define their own style, all
the slum rehabilitation buildings are to follow Art Deco's horizontal lines,
geometric patterns and streamlined appearance.


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