 Some were architecturally designed, influenced by contemporary developments in North America during the forties, fifties and sixties.Most however, were designed by owners and contractors working loosely in that mode, with those elements and features, to varying degrees of success.As tastes and trends changed in the seventies and eighties, in step with the booming oil-based economy, the more modest homes of the fifties and sixties were joined by lavishly designed mansions, occupied by the wealthy business class of citizens - mainly of East Indian descent.