1. WHAT IS ART DECO?
- In the United States, Art Deco was a product of new ideas and movements and found its inspirations in many distinct early 20th Century European design styles such as Cubism, French Art Deco, German Bauhaus and Expressionism, Dutch de Stijl, Amsterdam School, Vienna Secession and others.
- The term Art Deco came into common usage in the 1980s as public interest in the style was renewed and is generally used to cover several distinct periods.
2.WHAT IS THE SKYSCRAPER STYLE?
- Art Deco became known as the Skyscraper Style for the buildings that sprang up in every big city in the mid to late 1920s.
- This was classical Art Deco, as first popularized at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, featuring expensive materials, angular yet voluptuous with elaborate motifs of fountains, nudes and flora.
3. STREAMLINE MODERNE?
- Miami Beach’s building boom came during the second phase of Art Deco known as Streamline Moderne, which began with the stock market crash and ended in most cases with the outbreak of World War II.
- It was less decorative—a more sober reflection of the Great Depression. It relied more on machine-inspired forms, and American ideas in industrial design.
- It was buttressed by the belief that times would get better and was infused with the optimistic futurism extolled at America’s World Fairs of the 1930s.
4. AND DEPRESSION MODERNE?
- Stripped Classic or Depression Moderne was a sub-style often used for governmental buildings, the U.S. Post Office being the best example in Miami Beach.
EXAMPLES OF ART DECO FEATURES?
5. EYEBROWS
- These are small shelf-like ledges that protrude over exterior windows and were used to provide much-needed shade, sometimes reducing the temperature inside the building by as much as 30%.
6. BANDING
- Speed and streamlining became important during this era, especially in the new modes of travel such as the first commercial flights, trains such as the Orient Express and ocean-going liners.
- Enhancing the illusion that these immobile structures were rapidly speeding objects, colorful horizontal bands (also called “racing stripes”) were painted on exteriors or applied with tile.
7. THE RULE OF THREE.
- Early deco designers often used architectural elements in multiples of three, creating tripartite facades with triple sets of windows, eyebrows or banding.
8. TROPICAL DECO.
- Miami Beach architects used local imagery to create what we now call Tropical Deco.
- In keeping with the setting, premises were plastered, painted, or etched with seaside images.
- Palm trees, sunbursts, waves, flamingos, and the like were particularly common.
- Relief ornamentation featuring whimsical flora, fauna and ocean-liner motifs were used to reinforce the image of Miami Beach as a seaside resort.
9. STRIPPED CLASSIC.
- The most austere version of art deco (sometimes dubbed Depression moderne) was used for buildings commissioned by the Public Works Administration.
10. GENERAL FEATURES TO LOOK OUT FOR
- Over-all symmetry, ziggurat (stepped) rooflines, glass block, decorative sculptural panels, eyebrows, round porthole windows, terrazzo floors, curved edges and corners, elements in groups of three, neon lighting (used in both exteriors as well as interior spaces).
How many of these features can you spot in the hotel below?
