Indo-Saracenic Revival architecture
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The Indo-Saracenic Revival (also known as Indo-Gothic or Mughal-Gothic) was a architectural style movement by British architects in the late 19th century in British India. It drew elements from native Indian/Indo-Islamic architecture, and combined it with the Gothic revival style favoured in Victorian Britain.
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[edit] Background
When the British first came to South Asia, they considered themselves the legitimate rulers rather than its conquerors, so they sought to justify their presence by relating themselves to the previous rulers, the Mughals. By doing this they kept elements of British and European architecture, while adding Indian characteristics; this, coupled with the British allowing some regional Indian princes to stay in power, made their presence more 'palatable' for the Indians. The British tried to encapsulate South Asia's past within their own buildings and so represent Britain’s Raj as legitimate, while at the same time constructing a modern network of railways, colleges, and law courts.
The architectural style was exported to British Malaya (present day Peninsular Malaysia) via British engineers and architects influenced by Indo-Saracenic stylings in British India. During the design of a new town hall for Kuala Lumpur in the late 19th century, C. E. Spooner, then State Engineer of the Public Works Department, favoured a "Mahometan style" over a neoclassical one to reflect Islamic mores in the region, instructing architect Charles Norman, who was further assisted by R. A. J. Bidwell, to redesign the building.[1] Norman and Bidwell, having previously served in northern India, adopted various elements of Indo-Saracenic architecture into the town hall. Upon completion in 1897, the town hall, now know as the Sultan Abdul Samad Building, became the first building influenced by Indo-Saracenic architecture to be built in Malaya.[1] The town hall inspired other civic buildings in the vicinity to be built in a similar style, while a handful of commercial buildings in Malaya have also been known to adopt some of the style's elements. The style was also favoured as one of several adopted by British architects with regards to Malayan mosques as they did not feel the need to adhere accurately to the cultural heritage, and the traditional culture of the Malays, who remain prominent in Malayan society and are Muslims, did not have the means to design a building of imperial scale; both the Jamek Mosque and Ubudiah Mosque are examples of mosques that resulted from this combination.[2] While its popularity was limited to the 1890s to the 1910s, the style has been reused for newer governments buildings of the late-20th century and 21st century, such as several public buildings in Putrajaya.
[edit] Characteristics
Fundamentally, Indo-Saracenic designs by predominately British imperialist colonizers, promoting their own sense of “rightful self-glorification”, and eventually, nonetheless, came to appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities of continental Europeans and Americans, whose architects came to astutely incorporate telling indigenous "Asian exoticism" elements (as compiled in the architectural vocabulary list below), whilst implementing their own engineering innovations supporting such elaborate construction, both in India and abroad, evidenced to this day in public, private and governmentally owned buildings. Of which, the latter were often rendered on an intentionally grand scale, reflecting and promoting a notion of an unassailable (but for some, of a disparaging bent, a vainglorious) British Empire.
Again, structures of this design sort, particularly those built in India and England, were built in conformance to advanced British structural engineering standards of the 1800s, which came to include infrastructures composed of iron, steel and poured concrete (the innovation of reinforced cement and pre-cast cement elements, set with iron and/or steel rods, developed much later); the same can be said for like structures built elsewhere, making use of the same design vocabulary, by local architects, that would come to be constructed in continental Europe and the Americas: Indo-Saracenic’s popularity flourished for a span of some 30-years.
Notable, too, is that Britons, in fact Europeans generally, had long nurtured a taste for the aesthetic exuberance of such “Asian exoticism” design, as displayed in innovative Indo-Saracenic style.
Similarly, up to that point, Chinoiserie had already been manifest and cherished throughout Britain, Europe and the Americas. Its centuries long history witnessed the incorporation of "Asian exoticism", of the earlier manifestation which, of course, referenced Sino origins (and to a far lesser extent the Japanese aesthetic) was known as Chinoiserie, with the appellation Japanned. when referring to, for example, a lacquered Chippendale desk, bookcase or tallcaseclock, painted ornately (decorated) with figures and scenes, was dubbed, Japanned. Visual queues and elements, of those two exotic Asian styles manifested into a broad array of artifacts, such as these: needlepoint, petti-point and embroidery as well as silk fabrics manufacture, pigments, mural paintings, interior design elements, exterior design elements, writing materials, porcelain, furniture fabrication and furniture upholstery, clothing fashions, cosmetics et cetera.
Supported by various disciplines' skilled artisans' imagination, exoticism promulgated itself across a broad demographic of British, European and Americas’ citizenry, while contemporaneous advances in refined mass-production methods, technologies and distribution channels, supported numerous price point reductions, spurring mass consumerism: wants and sales across broad demographics world-wide. Later this mass consumer lust for Asian exoticism found expression and unfortunate direct linkage with Newport, Rhode Island’s immoral Old China Trade that led to the ever worse Triangular Trade Route, also known as Triangle Trade: featuring rum, molasses and … slavery: set into motion more than the wheels of mere mass consumerism; inextricably, fostered, too, was the ultimate expression of vain-glorious imperialism, whose aftermath, including opiate mega-agriculture, opium drug production and drug distribution plagues the world to this very day.
Adaptation of such design innovations spilled over into and determined the aesthetic direction of major architectural projects, expressing themselves in the Baroque, Regency and design periods beyond.
Today, that spread of elaborate Asian exoticism design fulfillment remains evidenced in many residential and governmental edifices wrought of the masterpiece initiatives of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries; much had initially been contributed by the stupendously rich and indulgent sea-merchant Venetian Empire, whose existence spanned nearly a millennium, and whose Gothic architecture came to incorporate a plethora of Asian exoticism elements, such as the Moorish Arch in its windows, related to the latter "harem window", all stemming back to earlier and later travelers, but most celebrated in the Travels of Marco Polo.
Generally, the insatiable craze for Asian exoticism relished in those earlier periods, testamentary in their parallel Chinoiserie expression, likewise, ushered in this latter colonial British fascination with the luxuriant exoticism found in the indigenous Indian design milieu, whose characteristics includes the following vocabulary list of design elements and motifs (often paralleling and expanding upon the already ornateness of the earlier Venetian’s unique Gothic-Moorish, also known as Venetian Gothic architecture ad-mixture):
- onion (bulbous) domes
- overhanging eaves
- pointed arches, cusped arches, or scalloped arches
- vaulted roofs
- domed kiosks
- many miniature domes
- domed chhatris
- pinnacles
- towers or minarets
- harem windows
- open pavilions or pavilions with Bangala roofs
- pierced open arcading
Chief proponents of this style of architecture were these: Robert Fellowes Chisholm, Charles Mant, Henry Irwin, William Emerson, George Wittet and Frederick Stevens, along with numerous other skilled professionals and artisans throughout Europe and the Americas.
Structures built in Indo-Saracenic style in India (and in certain nearby countries, themselves, manifestations of the eventual dissolution of the British imperial colonization suffered in Asia), were predominately grand public edifices, such as clock towers and courthouses. Likewise, civic as well as municipal and governmental colleges along with town halls counted this style among its top-ranked and most-prized structures to this day; ironically, in Britain itself, for example, King George IV's Royal Pavilion at Brighton, (which twice in its lifetime has been threatened with being torn-down, denigrated by some as a “carnival sideshow”, and dismissed by others as “an architectural folly of inferior design”, no less) and elsewhere, these rare and often diminutive (though sometimes, as mentioned, of grand-scale), residential structures that exhibit this colonial style are highly valuable and prized by the communities in which they exist as being somehow “magical” in appearance.
Typically, in India, villages, towns and cites of some means would lavish significant sums on construction of such "indigenous ethnic architecture" when plans were drawn up for construction of the local railway stations, museums and art galleries.
Relatively costly, for all their inherent customization, ornament and minutia decoration, regardless of otherwise locally inexpensive labor, moderately priced skilled artisans' ingenuity (stone and wood carving, as well as the exquisite lapidary/inlaid work) and usual accessibility to requisite raw materials, nonetheless, the appearance of the occasional residential structure of this sort, its being built in part or whole with Indo-Saracenic design elements/motifs, were and remain, for the most part, costly then, but, rewardingly, such structures have grown ever more valuable and highly prized by local and foreign populations for their exuberant beauty today.
Either evidenced in a property’s primary unit or any of its outbuildings, such estate-caliber residential properties lucky enough to boost the presence of an Indo-Saracenic structure, are still to be seen, generally, where in instances urban sprawl has not yet overcome them; often they are to be found in exclusive neighborhoods' (or surrounded, as cherished survivors, by enormous sky-scarpers, in more recently claimed urbanized areas throughout this “techno” driven, socio-economic revolutionary era marking India’s recent decade’s history), and are often locally referred to as "mini-palaces". Usually, their form-factors are these: townhouse, wings and/or porticoes. Additionally, more often seen are the diminutive renditions of the Indo-Saracenic style, built originally for lesser budgets, finding their nonetheless romantic expression in the occasional and serenely beautiful garden pavilion outbuildings, throughout the world; especially, in India … and England.
[edit] Examples
[edit] In India
 Victoria Terminus, now known as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus |
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 Ripon Building part of the Chennai Corporation in Chennai |
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[edit] In Pakistan
[edit] In the United Kingdom
 Sassoon Mausoleum, now a chic Brighton supper club |
[edit] In Malaysia
 Textile Museum in Kuala Lumpur. |
 Old High Court in Kuala Lumpur. |
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 Old Kuala Lumpur Town Hall. |
 Jamek Mosque in Kuala Lumpur. |
 Railway Administration Building, Kuala Lumpur. |
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_(frontal_facade),_Kuala_Lumpur.jpg)
[edit] See also
- Moorish Revival architecture
- Hindoo style
[edit] References
- ^ a b Gullick, John Michael (1998). "The British 'Raj' style ", The Encyclopedia of Malaysia (Architecture), p. 82–83.
- ^ Mizan Hashim, David (1998). "Indian and Mogul influences on Mosques", The Encyclopedia of Malaysia (Architecture), p. 84–85.
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