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Streamline Moderne

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Bather's Building, now the Maritime Museum (1937) in San Francisco's Aquatic Park, evokes a streamlined double–ended ferryboat
Normandie Hotel, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was inspired by SS Normandie, the ship, and includes the ship's original sign
Greyhound bus terminal, Cleveland, Ohio
Midland Hotel, Morecambe, Lancashire, England
Judge's tower in the Aquatic Park Historic District, San Francisco
Club Moderne, Anaconda, Montana
20th Century Limited by Henry Dreyfuss
Media related to streamlined locomotives at Wikimedia Commons

Streamline Moderne, sometimes referred to by either name alone, was a late type of the Art Deco design style which emerged during the 1930s. Its architectural style emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements.

Background

As the depression decade of the 1930s progressed, Americans saw a new aspect of the Art Deco style emerge in the marketplace: Streamlining. The Streamlining concept was first created by industrial designers who stripped Art Deco design of its fauna and flora in favor of the aerodynamic pure-line concept of motion and speed developed from scientific thinking. As a result an array of designers quickly ultra-modernized and streamlined the designs of everyday objects. Manufacturers of clocks, radios, telephones, cars, furniture and numerous other household appliances embraced the concept with open arms.

The style was the first to incorporate electric light into architectural structure. In the First Class dining room of the SS Normandie, fitted out 1933–35, twelve tall pillars of Lalique glass and 38 columns lit from within illuminated the room. The Strand Palace Hotel foyer (1930), preserved from demolition by the Victoria and Albert Museum during 1969, was one of the first uses of internally-lit architectural glass, and coincidentally was the first Moderne interior preserved in a museum.

The Streamline Moderne was both a reaction to Art Deco and a reflection of austere economic times. Gone was unnecessary ornament. Sharp angles were replaced with simple, aerodynamic curves. Exotic woods and stone were replaced with cement and glass.

Art Deco and Streamline Moderne were not necessarily opposites. Streamline Moderne buildings with a few Deco elements were not uncommon but the prime movers behind streamline design (Raymond Loewy, Walter Dorwin Teague, Gilbert Rohde, Norman Bel Geddes) all disliked Art Deco, seeing it as effete, falsely modern, essentially a fraud.

Architecture

Common characteristics of Streamline Moderne and Art Moderne

  • Horizontal orientation
  • Rounded edges, corner windows, and glass brick walls
  • Glass block
  • Porthole windows
  • Chrome hardware
  • Smooth exterior wall surfaces, usually stucco (smooth plaster finish)
  • Flat roof with coping
  • Horizontal grooves or lines in walls
  • Subdued colors: base colors were typically light earth tones, off-whites, or beiges; and trim colors were typically dark colors (or bright metals) to contrast from the light base.

The Normandie Hotel, which opened during 1942, is built in the stylized shape of Normandie the ship, and it includes the ship's original sign. The Sterling Streamliner Diners were diners designed like streamlined trains.

Although Streamline Moderne houses are less common than streamline commercial buildings, residences do exist. The Lydecker House in Los Angeles, built by Howard Lydecker, is an example of Streamline Moderne design in residential architecture. In tract development, elements of the style were frequently used as a variation in post-war row housing in San Francisco's Sunset District.

Notable examples

Influences

Industrial and consumer product design

The style was applied to appliances such as electric clocks, sewing machines, small radio receivers and vacuum cleaners. Their manufacturing processes exploited developments in materials science including aluminium and bakelite. Compared to Europe, the 1930s U.S. had a stronger focus on design as a means to increase sales of consumer products. Streamlining was associated with prosperity and an exciting future. This hope resonated with the American middle class, the major market for consumer products. A wide range of goods from refrigerators to pencil sharpeners was designed to resemble streamlined vehicles.

This can be contrasted with functionalism, which was a leading design style in Europe at the same time. One reason for the simple designs in functionalism was to lower the production costs of the items, making them affordable to the large European working class.[2] Streamlining and functionalism represent two very different schools in modernistic industrial design, but both reflecting the intended consumer.

Motion pictures

See also

References

  1. ^ Lipman, Jonathan, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, Courier Dover Publications, 2003 ISBN 0-486-42748-X, 9780486427485 p. 31
  2. ^ Kjetil Fallan, University of Oslo, in "Aluminium – en kulturhistorie" http://www.apollon.uio.no/vis/art/2010_2/artikler/aluminium
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Streamline Moderne architecture.
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