‘We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us’ – Winston Churchill
It’s called the city centre. Nestled at its southern-most tip and flanked by a Harbour on its east and the Arabian Sea on its west; housing Mumbai’s main business and wealthiest residential localities, its iconic landmarks, prestigious educational institutions, private membership clubs, world-famous stadiums, maidans esplanades and beaches. It is both an address and a state of mind, a destination and an aspiration; vilified, eulogized, criticized and celebrated, in snobberies and salutations and countless memes and jokes as the capital and epicentre of all that’s cool or counterfeit – depending on who you speak to.
But hard as it is to imagine even with all the history and heritage going for it, that there was a time in South Mumbai’s life when it appeared to be just another giddy teenager on the cusp of her first date, a district in flux. A work in progress. A debutante on the verge of something new and exciting…
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Cities are constantly reinventing themselves. Upgrading, downgrading, fading, degrading… and what seems old and eternal today, was once just a gleam in a town planner’s eye, the next assignment in an architect’s busy agenda, a dust bowl of a construction site…
Hard to imagine then that the landmarks and monuments of SoBo that you pass by today on your daily route, that appear prehistoric hum drum, invisible and permanent, at one time, were the harbingers of change progress and excitement, signalling new beginnings and ways of being, announcing to its populace that they were on the fast track to a bright new shiny future. Fifty years ago…
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To begin with, you have to imagine what it must have been like to enter SoBo through the portals of IM Kadri’s bold new modern aesthetic of the 15-acre Shiv Sagar Estate in Worli, built in 1967. Until the construction of those five massive identical hexagonal office towers, that rose on your right, just on the outskirts of the Laxman Rekha that meant you were on the last leg of your journey into ‘town’, Worli had been a sleepy residential suburb, the home of fishermen and Maharajas. With its arrival, the Shiv Sagar estate signalled unequivocally that soon you would be entering A twenty-first century brave new city rising from the memory of heritage and history, ever aspiring for new thoughts and ideas, a symbol of vitality and vigour.
As children driving into town in 1967 past the Shiv Sagar Estate it was a thrill in itself, a signal of things to come…
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Four constructions in SoBo, coincidentally, all completed in the late 60s and early 70s, had signalled the birth of a new ERA in SoBo’s life, had given Mumbaikers the distinct idea that an exciting age had dawned and had afforded its young people their thrilling fantasies and feverish daydreams.
Believe it or not, one of these was what is now considered the frumpy and outdated Amarsons department store at Breach Candy. Today, a rag-tag retail mix of cholis and blouses, odds and ends, gifts and gewgaws, the sprawling store was once considered the epitome of style and sophistication, when it had first opened its doors in 1974, and the city’s hoi polloi had thronged to inhale its air-conditioned splendour and goggle at its sleek new interiors, a far cry from the clunky wooden furniture of others of its ilk. The fact that it had a posh address, shiny plastic carrier bags with attractive logos and uniformed salesmen had added to its lustre.
Lying not even a few metres away from Amarsons and flanked by the upmarket residential enclaves of Altamount Road and Malabar Hill was another symbol of modernity and progress, the country’s first flyover at Kemps Corner, built by renowned architect and civil engineer and co conceiver of Navi Mumbai, Shirish Patel. Its construction in 1965 had been a significant marker both on the journey into the heart of SoBo and the reason why the area had assumed such a noteworthy position as the urbs primus of the city itself.
The imagined whoosh of butterflies in the stomach of passengers as their vehicles ascended its gradual incline and the feeling of being aloft and soaring had been an essential part of the SoBo experience in those days.
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Who can mention the Kemps Corner flyover without speaking of Charles Correa’s Kanchenjunga Apartments? Completed in 1974, it had been another bold and audacious statement from Mumbai’s internationally renowned architect, heralding a new age; the 32-towered dramatically shaped building with its interlocking of four cellular apartment typologies each with sumptuous verandahs, high ceilings and terrace gardens was meant as a deliberate challenge to the rest of the city’s vernacular skyline and faceless unimaginative colonies and constructions. Love it or hate it — there was no ignoring the fact that in the boldness of its imagination, it was one more reason to say that SoBo had stolen a march over not only the rest of the city but the country as well.
The fourth leg of this platform of modernism that showcased SoBo’s reputation as a place of dynamism and vision had undoubtedly been the construction of the Air India building built by John Burgee of the New York City architectural firm Johnson/Burgee in 1974; the centrally air-conditioned tower with the airline’s distinctive centaur balanced tantalisingly on its rooftop boasted of the country’s first escalator and became a talking point on the city’s grapevine; along with neighbouring high-rises like the Express Towers and the Oberoi Sheraton it made up the cluster of skyscrapers on the 64-acre reclamation from the sea which had been initiated by city planners as a project to ease the housing crisis in Mumbai and was one more harbinger of change and aspiration.
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Fifty years ago, in an already celebrated area of Mumbai, these high profile constructions had announced the arrival of a sleek and modern way of being. Each had brought with it a new possibility a new lifestyle and a new apsipration, while adding to SoBo’s lustre and reputation as one of the most forward-looking localities in the country.
Today, with the construction of the metro and the coastal road as we once again inhabit a city that resembles a work in progress, a dusty construction bowl, a seemingly unceasing tangle of cranes and trucks, it is tempting to think back on those days when such projects and dreams had shaped who we are and what we became as a consequence.
Perhaps fifty years from now, today’s children will once again look back in awe and wonder at the time when the construction of new milestones had shaped their imagination and given their city its peerless character and panache.