Landscape view: How the bungalow, born in Bengal, took on new shapes across India
Hybrid formats in Mysuru. A modernist take in Lutyens’ Delhi. Art Deco in Mumbai... see how each of these evolved, what made them special.
Part of the beauty of the bungalow lies in its refusal to be boxed-in. It is a form of housing that has shape-shifted, over about 250 years, accommodating local cultures, climates and terrains in different parts of the world. It has evolved to embrace new artistic styles and innovations.
Calcutta, mid-1700s on: Even before the East India Company began to govern in India, it was setting up factories, warehouses, trading posts, barracks for their armed guards — and homes. Calcutta had been the base of these operations since about 1690.
By the 1750s, the colonial bungalow had become a status symbol in a fast-growing city that, from 1764 on, would be governed by the Company, after the defeat of the Nawab of Bengal. Calcutta, now the British capital in India, saw palatial homes built for British officers, and for wealthy Anglophile Indian families too.
These were surrounded by wraparound balconies, set amid large grounds. They had colonnaded verandahs and semi-open porches and pavilions designed to accommodate large gatherings and impress guests. The homes built in this style for Indians displayed an interesting hybrid character.
“Displaying neoclassical facades and strong European influences… (these) were planned as twin- or multiple-courtyard houses which addressed the need for gender segregation and strict social hierarchy in a Bengali joint family. Over time, British trappings in terms of furniture and furnishing were added,” architects and architectural scholars Miki Desai and Madhavi Desai note, in The Colonial Bungalow in India, an article published in the 2011 newsletter of the International Institute for Asian Studies.
The grandeur came at a price. Compared to the ₹5,000 it took to build an “excellent bungalow” in almost every other part of colonised India in the late-18th century, the ones in Kolkata “could not be finished for less than ten-times that sum”, notes the late architectural historian Anthony D King, in his 1982 thesis The Bungalow: 1600-1980 (which became the book The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture; 1984).
Mysuru, 1850s on: Here, a particularly interesting example of the hybridisation evolved.
As the British sought control of the Wodeyar kingdom in the 1830s, and eventually settled for a position of power by proxy (as they did with so many kings), a host of newly powerful and newly wealthy traders, power brokers and members of the extended royal family began to build large homes in the vicinity of the Mysore palace.
“At their core, the houses borrowed from the then-traditional idea of a central courtyard. But these bungalows were heavily inspired by the neoclassical architectural aesthetic of the British,” says Mysuru-based conservation architect Ravindra Gundurao.
This confluence birthed some unique design elements.While the sides and back of these bungalows were often built using traditional mud and tile, for instance, the front facade was made with bricks set in mud mortar and faux plaster made using mortar. The pediment situated at the centre featured statuettes, but of local deities. There was often a kalash-inspired finial on the Mangalorean tiled roof, coexisting with overhanging eaves with Victorian drops and colonnaded verandahs.
“These were bungalows inhabited by a new breed of affluent locals, who wore dhotis with coats and played tennis at the local club. But the architecture they established wasn’t a copy of what they saw abroad; it was an intelligent amalgamation,” Gundurao says.
Delhi, 1911 on: Amid social unrest in Bengal, and a growing Indian empire that was becoming increasingly difficult to administer from Calcutta, the British decided to move their capital to the more-centrally-located Delhi.
This was a chance to reimagine what a city could be. Fresh ideas were sought. Eventually, the British architect Edwin Lutyens, along with Herbert Baker (who had done extensive work in South Africa), were commissioned to design the city.
The homes Lutyens built (Baker focused on the government buildings) were bungalows in the grand neoclassical style. They featured tall pillars and arched porticos, courtyards and gardens, but also incorporated local materials, high ceilings and large windows, in a nod to the tropical climate. “Most of these homes are rather formal, symmetrical, and designed in the neoclassical style,” say architects Miki Desai and Madhavi Desai, authors of The Bungalow in Twentieth-Century India (2012).
The country’s most powerful people soon moved in. Of about 1,000 bungalows in the designated Lutyens Bungalow Zone — now a protected heritage precinct — few are privately owned. Most still house politicians and the seniormost government officials.
A host of bungalows that were nearly as grand had been built before Lutyens’ Delhi, to house civil officers. This area was then nicknamed White Town, but is officially Civil Lines.
Bombay, 1890s on: Until the city’s suburbs began to take shape, the typical standalone home in this commercial hub was the mansion. These were grand residences inspired by the manors of Britain. Think imposing gates, sweeping driveways and stone structures, sitting amid landscaped lawns and gardens. These homes were typically owned by wealthy trading and business families, often Gujarati or Parsi.
As the city grew in wealth and population, plans for the first suburbs — Mahim, Sion, Matunga, Bandra — finally began to take shape, in the late-1800s. The construction of these, over the next few decades, would coincide with an architectural movement sweeping the world: Art Deco.
This style, born in 1920, was typified by a young, fresh aesthetic that used reinforced cement concrete (RCC) to turn away from the austerity of stone to embrace curves, whimsy and personalisation.
And so, on the plots parcelled out to upper middle-class families, bungalows in these coastal suburbs were built with curvilinear balconies, geometric grilles, ocean motifs and nautical speed lines — in keeping with the ways in which this new design style was being adapted to reflect the identities of specific cities around the world.
Religious motifs such as the swastika and lotus were also woven into grilles, plaster-relief work and entrance canopies, says architect and heritage consultant Prerna Shetty, co-founder of Studio Gestalt. “Several of these Art Deco bungalows came to be built for the upper middle-class, by the upper middle-class,” she adds.
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Meanwhile, the bungalow was also being transformed in British colonies elsewhere in the world.
In mainland Singapore and Malaysia, the template can be traced to the mid-1800s. According to the country’s Urban Redevelopment Authority, Singapore’s bungalows can be grouped into five styles: Early, Victorian, Black and White, Art Deco, and Modern.
The Early Bungalow style was minimalist, with raised timber floors, walls made of strips of wood, and very little ornamentation. The Victorian style blended load-bearing brick walls with timber frames, and added turrets and elaborately decorated facades. Modernist styles followed, with plain white walls and open floor plans.
In Africa: The early bungalows here were detached, single-storey structures, often built on a raised platforms in light of the frequent flooding.
Wide verandahs helped insulate the inner rooms from the intense heat. Screened verandahs also kept insects, and therefore diseases, at bay. As in India, these verandahs served an additional purpose: they helped keep outsiders, particularly people of colour, restricted to the fringes of the home.
Each bungalow sat on a sprawling plot of land. Over time, across South Africa, the West Indies, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya and Uganda, this would have a drastic effect on ownership patterns, which had traditionally been rooted in kinship.
“The bungalow was part of a physical and spatial process of urbanisation which incorporated modern Africa into a capitalist world economy… (it played) a significant role in the social and cultural transformation of West Africa,” notes the late architectural historian King.
Home, after all, isn’t always where the heart is.
