The buildings of Channai over the past century and a half have diverse and interesting forms and expressions. They do not easily fit under labels such as colonial architecture, modern architecture and critical regionalism or can entirely be explained through concepts like colonialism, identity, nation, region and hybrid. This book attempts to record and interpret the pluralistic range together for the first time. The particular experience of modernity in India has been articulated explicitly in other fields. In this book, it is taken up as the idea of Indian modernity to include and understand the architecture of Chennai.