Speaking Facades of Puducherry: Hybrid French–Tamil Architecture and the Spreadability of Heritage on Social Media

Abstract

The architectural language of the facades of Puducherry remains twofold:
French and Tamil. This dichotomy appears congenial to the hyper-consumerist condition
described by Lipovetsky (2005), in which codes and references continually shift while being
nourished by comparison. These hybridisations are enriched by colour and by the presence of murals
appreciated by visitors, which invite photography and video and thus engage social media.
This paper aims to reconstruct the “spreadability” of this content  notion more nuanced than
the generic idea of “virality” by tracing it primarily in the dialogue between physical reality
and the shifting meanings of imagery, identity and perception. Methodologically, study
combines on-site chromatic survey of the White Town with qualitative analysis of the
platform’s aesthetic and algorithmic logic. The originality of the contribution lies in
connecting a measurable architectural variable with the media dynamics of heritage circulation, showing how layered
intertextual references of social networks redefine idea of heritage and of “objects of
memory”. The findings indicate that Puducherry is progressively re-coded as an aesthetic
destination governed by globalised visual codes rather than by its Franco-Tamil specificity,
and they clarify the stakes of this re-coding for heritage studies and for the management of
historic urban environments.