English
Cinema, Hotel and Casino
Vasco da Gama, Goa, India
Equipment and Infrastructures
These three buildings are located in the most central part of the city. They were built due to the strong commitment of Goa’s families to developing infra-structures linked to leisure and tourism, in line with strategy set out by the Improvements Commission for the city’s future. They were also vital to ensure that the city of Vasco da Gama gained some consistency, due to its low population and construction density. Built from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s, the buildings of the Casino (ca. 1925), Hotel Zuari (1940-55) and Cine-Vasco (1956) follow trends from the neighbouring territory. The Goan elite copied the Indian elite in the stylistic course and type of architectural commissions. In the 1930s the Indian elite began to favour architecture wherein Indian architects and international vocabularies played a greater role, thereby reacting against the stylistic options more linked to the colonial power. The language presented by these three buildings varies between art deco, then very popular in the Mumbai area, and the international style, thus following the examples of countless hotels and cinemas scattered throughout Indian cities. Although the Casino’s designer is known (Luís Bismark Dias, who studied at Thomason’s College of Civil Engineering), these facts lead one to conjecture that the other designers also came from or studied in former British territories, as occurred at the Cine-Metropole (1952) in Margao that belonged to the Mavany family, whose designer was from Pakistan, and the Hotel Mandovi. The building was converted into a casino in the 1930s. It had been built to house the Mormugao Liter- ary Society [Grémio], occupying the plot where the Avenida Principal met the shoreline Avenida Marginal – the onetime Esplanada Jaime de Morais. It had only one floor, with a rectangular footprint marked by five turrets, one on each corner of the building and the last one marking the main entrance. Although nowadays abandoned, it is apparently unchanged and it is still possible to imagine the splendid festive events held there. The structure is very open, enabling constant ventilation of the spaces. The main façade is adorned with natural and geometric motifs influenced by art deco. The Cine-Vasco is located where a cinema had already stood previously, and reflects its exceptional site at the meeting of two of the city’s most important avenues. The corner site’s resolution was also adopted at the Hotel Zuari, and both stand out vis-à-vis the orthogonal streets. The Cine-Vasco building has undergone few changes, although a building was erected on its west side, while the Hotel Zuari has had a floor added. Both are closed and in a bad state of preservation.