Consuming the home : Creating consumers for the middle-class house in India, 1920–60

As India’s cities grew in the mid-twentieth century, Indians experimented with new styles of homes, ranging from modest bungalows and multi-storey blocks of flats, to expansive mansions offering all the latest comforts. A key feature in shaping these experiments was architectural pattern books – a new genre of publications which took off in the subcontinent in the interwar period. Written by architects, engineers, and others, these offered practical advice to those trying to build their own home, but also shaped desires for homes. Through detailed, practical details on construction in the 1920s and 1930s, and then aspirational visions of comfort and sociability in the 1940s and 1950s, architectural pattern books offered up advice tailored to the needs of the moment. In the process, these books helped shape consumption of home ideals, while also themselves becoming objects of consumption – to be bought, enjoyed and passed on like other commodities.