Overview

Art Deco buildings, with their highly ornate façades and dramatic forms, are a vital part of our surroundings. This wide-ranging exploration of Art Deco architectural design embraces many different times and places in its summary of the movement's origins, development and influence. Various types of architecture were termed Art Deco, and their antecedents might include Arts and Crafts, fin-de-siècle Vienna, Cubism, Expressionism and the Bauhaus. Patricia Bayer shows that Art Deco masterpieces can be seen and admired worldwide: from the skyscrapers of New York City to imperial dwellings in Tokyo; from Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Battersea Power Station to movie theatres and diners across America. Post-modernism now uses its motifs and idioms, and many of the original buildings still survive, fully restored to their former glory. Sumptuously illustrated, this is a comprehensive guide to the best-loved of all 20th-century architectural styles.

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9780500281499

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'Richly illustrated, wide-ranging' - Art Book Survey

In introducing her book, Patricia Bayer acknowledges that Art Deco architecture is a difficult concept to define: at once traditional and innovative; absorbing influences from a variety of sources and movements, yet introducing a whole range of new materials to architecture. Its buildings are characterized by a mixture of materials and decorations, many recalling earlier forms from as long ago as ancient Egypt. Its most distinctive structures were urban ones, most notably exuberantly decorated, towering 'cathedrals of commerce', the prime examples of which are New York's Chrysler and Empire State Buildings. Below these rank a myriad other orders of buildings, public and private, monumental and vernacular - power stations and factories, cinemas and hotels, apartment buildings and private houses, exhibition pavilions and churches. Splendidly illustrated, the book is a comprehensive guide to a dominant 20th-century sytle of architecture, which is still very much alive, its motifs and idioms frequently plundered by today's architects. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Patricia Bayer is an art historian specializing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She has written extensively on Art Deco design and architecture. She is the author of Art Deco Architecture and Art Deco Interiors, both published by Thames & Hudson. She is also an avid deltiologist, or collector of postcards.

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