Indo-Saracenic Revival Architecture - Characteristics

Characteristics

Indo-Saracenic designs were introduced by British imperialist colonizers, promoting their own sense of “rightful self-glorification”, which came to appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities of continental Europeans and Americans, whose architects came to astutely incorporate telling indigenous "Asian Exoticism" elements, whilst implementing their own engineering innovations supporting such elaborate construction, both in India and abroad, evidence for which can be found to this day in public, private and government owned buildings. Public and Government buildings were often rendered on an intentionally grand scale, reflecting and promoting a notion of an unassailable and invincible 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 the British, 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 and also in their taste for Chinoiserie and Japanned. Supported by the imagination of skilled artisans of various disciplines, exoticism promulgated itself across a broad demographic of British, European and Americas’ citizenry, 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"

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 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.

The cost involved in the construction of buildings of this style was high, including all their inherent customization, ornament and minutia decoration, the artisans' ingenuous skills (stone and wood carving, as well as the exquisite lapidary/inlaid work) and usual accessibility to requisite raw materials, hence the style was executed only on buildings of a grand scale. However the occasional residential structure of this sort, (its being built in part or whole with Indo-Saracenic design elements/motifs) did appear quite often, and such buildings 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.