EXPRESSIONIST ARCHITECTURE was

an architectural movement that developed in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century in parallel with the expressionist visual and performing arts.

The term "Expressionist architecture" initially described the activities of the German, Dutch, Austrian, Czech and Danish AVANT GARDE from 1910 until ca. 1924. Subsequent redefinitions extended the term backwards to 1905 and also widened it to encompass the rest of Europe.

The style was characterised by an EARLYMODERNIST adoption of NOVEL MATERIALS FORMAL INNOVATION VERY UNUSUAL MASSING, INSPIRED BY NATURAL BIOMORPHIC FORMS OR BY NEW TECHNICAL POSSIBILITIES OFFERED BY THE MASS PRODUCTION OF BRICK, STEEL, AND GLASS.

Many expressionist architects fought in World War I and their experiences, combined with the political turmoil and social upheaval that followed the German Revolution of 1919, resulted in a UTOPIAN OUTLOOK and a ROMANTIC SOCIALIST AGENDA.
UTOPIA is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system.

Economic conditions severely limited the number of built commissions between 1914 and the mid 1920s, resulting in many of the most important expressionist works remaining as projects on paper, such as BRUNO TAUT's Alpine Architecture and HERMANN FINSTERLIN's Formspiels. Ephemeral exhibition buildings were numerous and highly significant during this period.

Economic conditions severely limited the number of built commissions between 1914 and the mid 1920s, resulting in many of the most important expressionist works remaining as projects on paper, such as BRUNO TAUT's Alpine Architecture and HERMANN FINSTERLIN's Formspiels. Ephemeral exhibition buildings were numerous and highly significant during this period.

Important events in expressionist architecture include; the WERKBUND EXHIBITION (1914) in Cologne, the completion and theatrical running of the Grosses Schauspielhaus, Berlin in 1919, the Glass Chain letters, and the activities of the Amsterdam School.

The major permanent extant landmark of Expressionism is Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower in Potsdam.

By 1925 most of the leading architects of Expressionism such as; BRUNO TAUT, ERICH MENDELSOHN, WALTER GROPIUS, MIES VAN DER ROHE and HANS POELZIG, along with other Expressionists in the visual arts, had turned toward the Neue Sachlichkeit (NEW OBJECTIVITY) movement, a more practical and matter-of-fact approach which rejected the emotional agitation of expressionism.

The NEW OBJECTIVITY (Neue Sachlichkeit) art movement arose in direct opposition to expressionism.
A few, notably HANS SCHAROUN,continued to work in an expressionist idiom.

In 1933, after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, expressionist art was outlawed as DEGENERATE ART. Until the 1970s scholars commonly played down the influence of the expressionists on the later International style, but this has been reevaluated in recent years.

 The Amsterdam School is a style of

architecture that arose from 1910 through about 1930 in The Netherlands. The Amsterdam School movement is part of international Expressionist architecture.

Buildings of the Amsterdam School are characterized by:

BRICK CONSTRUCTION WITH COMPLICATED MASONRY WITH A ROUNDED OR ORGANIC APPEARANCE

RELATIVELY TRADITIONAL MASSING

THE INTEGRATION OF AN ELABORATE SCHEME OR BUILDING ELEMENTS INSIDE AND OUT:

decorative masonry, art glass, wrought ironwork spires "ladder" windows (with horizontal bars) integrated architectural sculpture

The aim was to create a total architectural experience, interior and exterior.

The Amsterdam School had its origins in the office of architect EDUARD CUYPERS in Amsterdam. Although Cuypers wasn't a progressive architect himself, he gave his employees plenty of opportunity to develop.

. The three leaders of the Amsterdam School MICHEL DE KLERK, JOHAN VAN DER MEY and PIET KRAMER all worked for Cuypers until about 1910. Impetus for the movement also came from the city.

In 1905 Amsterdam was the first city to establish a building code, and the city hired Johan van der Mey afterwards, in the special position as "Aesthetic Advisor", to bring artistic unity and vision to its built environment.

Van der Mey's major commission, the 1912 cooperativecommercial SCHEEPVAARTHUIS (Shipping House), is considered the starting point of the movement.

Van der Mey sought the assistance of his former colleague-architects Michel de Klerk andPiet Kramer, and another architect named A.D.N. van Gendt was responsible for engineering the concrete structure.

The Scheepvaarthuis is the prototype for later Amsterdam School work. The most important examples are obviously found in Amsterdam. The movement and its followers played an important role in Berlage's overall plans for the expansion of Amsterdam.

The most important and productive member of the Amsterdam school was Michel de Klerk. Other members of the Amsterdam School included Jan Gratama (who gave it its name), Berend Tobia Boeyinga, P. H. Endt, H. Th. Wijdeveld, J. F. Staal, C. J. Blaauw, and P. L. Marnette. The journal Wendingen ("Windings" or "Changes"), published between 1918 and 1931, was considered the magazine of the Amsterdam School.

After De Klerk died in 1923 the style lost most of its importance. The De Bijenkorf department-store in the Hague by Piet Kramer of 1926 is considered to be the last example of "classic" Amsterdam School expressionism. Moderate variants of the style survived until the Second World War, for example in Protestant church architecture.

Imbued with socialist ideals, the AMSTERDAM SCHOOL STYLE was often applied to working-class housing estates, local institutions and schools.

For many Dutch towns HENDRIK BERLAGE designed the new urban schemes, while the architects of the Amsterdam School were responsible for the buildings.

The members of WENDIGEN lived and worked in AMSTERDAM. Their designs owed much to the work of H.P. BERLAGE (18561934) and stressed THE HANDICRAFT PROCESS OF BUILDING, THE REVELATION OF STRUCTURE, AND THE RESULTING DETAIL.

BERLAGE is known for his AMSTERDAM STOCK EXCHANGE, a brick and stone bearing-wall structure of medieval inspiration, but one with a skylit iron-truss roof over the stockexchange floor.

While the Stock Exchange was conceived quite rationally by Berlage, he had a number of influences namely: GOTTFRIED SEMPER P.J.H. CUIPERS, a designer in the brick tradition of Amsterdam VIOLLET-LE-DUC.

The Stock Exchanges Ruskinian expression of building materials, particularly through the colors and textures of its carefully composed wall surfaces, provided a starting point for Wendigen explorations.

In 1901 Berlage was commissioned by the City of Amsterdam to lay out residential neighborhoods in the area called Amsterdam South.

His proposals for two-story walk-ups of brick, with the street as the primary organizing element, provided the environment for buildings by such designers as PIET KRAMER (1881-1961) and MICHAEL DE KLERK (18841923).

KRAMER, an outgoing personality with an interest in the occult as well as Communist sympathies, designed his units for the DE DAGERAAD HOUSING ASSOCIATION in 1918-23. He used brick to make taut planar and bulging curvilinear walls

Inserted grid-like windows with avian overtones,

and applied roof tiles and copings to produce aggressive, prickly silhouettes.

The single most important example of the Amsterdam School style is HET SCHIP, designed by de Klerk.

DE KLERK was perhaps the most talented and original among the Dutch Expressionists. His project for the EIGEN HAARD housing association (1921) is more plastic than Kramers work, its silhouette more irregular, and its detailing more highly textured.

De Klerks abilities went well beyond the treatment of surfaces, however, as his HOUSING ON THE HENRIETTA RONNERPLEIN (1921) demonstrates.

Here, he manipulated BATTERED WALLS, LINKING CHIMNEYS, AND COMPOSITE WINDOWS to produce a three-dimensional architecture that is among the most original and provocative of the early 20th century.

DECORATIVE BRICKWORK

STAIRCASE WINDOWS

LADDERWINDOWS

HOUSE NUMBER PLAQUETTE

The building is solid brick with a rhythmic pattern of four stairwell towers which jut out slightly from the front faade. They rise above the roof-line with unusual parabolic gables, framed by canted vertical blocks resembling chimney stacks.

Het Schip ("The Ship") is an apartment building in the Spaarndammerbuurt district of Amsterdam, built in the architectural style of the Amsterdam School of Expressionist architecture. It is the single most important example of this style of architecture, using the Brick Expressionism version. The building was designed by Michel de Klerk. The building vaguely resembles the outlines of a ship. Its appearance is very unconventional from all angles. Designed in 1919, the building contains 102 homes for the working class, a small meeting hall and a post office, which as of 2001 is the museum of the Amsterdam School.

German expressionism was more diverse than the Dutch, concerned with both FORM and UTOPIANISM. Central to much German Expressionist thinking was the writing of PAUL SCHEERBART and his vision for a glass or crystalline architecture that would somehow ameliorate the repressive opacity of modern culture.

In part a reaction against the directions being pursued by the state-run DEUTSCHE WERKBUND, the counter-proposals of German Expressionism appeared dramatically at the 1914 Werkbund Exhibtion in Cologne where HENRI VAN DE VELDEs WERKBUND THEATER explored the theme of KUNSTWOLLEN, or the will to form, in contrast to the mechanistic type-form precepts of mainstream Werkbund thinking.

BRUNO TAUTs GLASS PAVILION gave physical reality to Scheerbarts proclamations.

Tauts Glass Pavilion was quite formal in its organization: a circular concrete base with central, axial stair; a circular rotunda, and a dome.

Taut so thoroughly exploited the possibilities of glass that the building became a kind of walk-in prism.
Glass walls, glass treads and risers, glass panels in the dome, all filtered and reflected light and color to produce a space intended at once to display glass as a product of industrial production and to nourish the human spirit.

Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of all built German Expressionist work was the GOETHEANUM designed by an amateur, RUDOLF STEINER (1861-1925).
A philosopher, scholar and student of the occult, Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society in 1912 and set out to build a free high school for spiritual science called GOETHEANUM, so connecting his thinking to the writings of Goethe.

A philosopher, scholar and student of the occult, Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society in 1912 and set out to build a FREE HIGH SCHOOL FOR SPIRIT SCIENCE called the Goetheanum, so connecting his thinking to the writings of GOETHE.

There were in fact, two GOETHEANIUMS, both in Domach, the first built of wood in 1913 and destroyed by fire at the end of 1922, and the second of concrete, which opened in 1928. GOETHEANIUM I can be compared to Van de Veldes WERKBUND THEATER; it was dominated by CURVILINEAR SHAPES, many that seemed melted and deformed.

Underlying this deformity, however, was a SYMMETRICAL PLAN COMPOSED OF INTERLOCKING CIRCLES, and the ROOFS WERE LIKE MANY TRADITIONAL GERMAN PROFILES, intended to shed snow.

GOETHEANUM II, which was also SYMMETRICAL IN PLAN, is more SCULPTURAL and FACETED, with the most fantastic part of the complex being the boilerhouse with its VEGETAL CHIMNEY STACK.

The EINSTEIN TOWER in Potsdam (1920-21) and the design for a HAT FACTORY in Luckenwalde (1921-23) by ERICH MENDELSOHN (1887-1953) offer yet another Expressionistic approach to architecture.

The dynamic qualities of the EINSTEIN TOWER, built of brick covered with stucco, demonstrate MENDELSOHNs interest in streamlined forms, with little connection to the Italian Futurists, but certainly a kinship to Van de Veldes Werkbund Theater and with the Secessionist productions of Joseph Maria Olbrich.

Mendelsohn exploited the metaphorical qualities in his hat factory design. Here he produced a scheme appropriate both to the realities of industrial manufacturing and the spirit of German economic aspirations.

The ADMINISTRATION BUILDING has a DE STIJL quality, with its assymetrical composition of orthogonal shapes, but in the PRODUCTION FACILITIES, Mendelsohn exploited structural and mechanical systems to produce logical but highly provocative forms.

The rigid frame supporting the WORKSHOP inspired a rhythmic composition of triangles on the exterior, and the VENTILATING HOODS of the dry vats are both purposeful and evocative.

Another German Expressionist monument is HANS POEZIGs (1869-1936) WATER TOWER at Posen (1911).

The skin of the tower is faceted and highly textured, with disparate masonry and glazing patterns. Beneath the water reservoir, Poelzig designed an exhibit hall that he planned to be converted into a market hall. The tower is a combination of purpose and fantasy.

ART DECO, then known as LART MODERNE, thrived in France from 1910, and it continued to be popular in America, especially for skyscrapers and theaters, through the 1930s, into the World War II era.

Art Deco was a movement in search of newness for a new century. Its LINEAR SYMMETRY was a distinct departure from the flowing asymmetrical organic curves of its predecessor style ART NOUVEAU.

However, its inspirations were eclectic and extreme:

CUBISM overlapping and faceted shapes
RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVISM the language of

mechanization FUTURISM a fascination with motion

MOTIFS are from ancient Egypt, Africa, the Orient, Aztecs. Decorative ideas came from the American Indian, Egyptian, Mayan and Aztec cultures, and ancient Greece and Rome.

MOTIFS : STYLIZED FLOWERS, FRONDS COILED TENDRILS SCALLOPS FACETED GEOMETRIES INCLUDING CHEVRON, ZIGZAG PATTERNS STYLIZED, IDEALIZED HEROIC HUMAN FIGURES

Art deco's linear symmetry was a distinct departure from the flowing asymmetrical organic curves of its predecessor style art nouveau; it embraced influences from many different styles of the early twentieth century, including neoclassical,constructivism, cubism, m odernism and futurism[5] and drew inspiration from ancient Egyptian and Aztec forms. Although many design movements have political or philosophical beginnings or intentions, art deco was purely decorative.[6]

The most famous Art Deco skyscraper is the CHRYSLER BUILDING in New York (1928), designed by WILLIAM VAN ALEN (1883-1954). Its crown-like dome of stainless steel, with tiered arches filled with sunbursts and capped with a spire, remains a classic for skyline-makers.

Its other notable ornamental features include EAGLE GARGOYLES and the famous RADIATORCAP ACROTERIA and adjacent FRIEZE OF ABSTRACTED CAR WHEELS.

New Yorkss most prolific Art Deco designer was ELY JACQUES KAHN (1884-1972), whose career spanned some 50 years. Representative of his output is the building NUMBER TWO PARK AVENUE (1927), with its wealth of FACETED and GEOMETRIC DETAIL both inside and out.

In 1929-30, RAYMOND HOOD (1881-1934) designed the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS BUILDING in New York, which in some ways approaches the minimalism of the International Style but also displays incised decorative panels of Art Deco inspiration and includes a subtle color palette of greens and terracottas colors outside the range of European Modernist dicta.

HOOD and FOUILHOUX, along with other firms, designed the complex of buildings comprising the ROCKEFELLER CENTER (begun 1929) and located within it a significant body of public art, including Art Deco sculpture by a variety of artists and the famous DIEGO RIVERA fresco that was destroyed soon after completion because of its sympathetic treatment of communism.

An artwork in itself s RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL, with its plush furniture and lush materials and lighting.

The tallest structure of the period was the EMPIRE STATE BUILDING (1931) by RICHMOND SHREVE (1877-1946), WILLIAM LAMB (1883-1952), and ARTHUR HARMON (1878-1958).

Its Art Deco ornament includes a vast number of SANDBLASTED ALUMINUM SPANDREL PANELS with ZIGZAG ORNAMENTATION.

In Los Angeles, Art Deco buildings took two forms: the so-called ZIG-ZAG MODERNE and the STREAMLINE MODERNE.

Zigzag Moderne was highly decorative with the faade of zigzag buildings adorned with geometric ornamentation from which it gets its name.
While a few dwellings were designed in the Zigzag Moderne style, it was primarily used for large public and commercial buildings, especially hotels, movie theaters, restaurants, skyscrapers, and department stores.

The style required expensive and exotic materials that were artistically designed and skillfully applied by artisans. It was largely a system of ornamentation applied to smooth building surfaces.

Decoration was often completed in a luxurious assortment of materials, including exotic wood veneers, marble, painted terra-cotta, and metals.

The principal characteristics of Zigzag Moderne are: SMOOTH SURFACED VOLUMES WINDOWS ARRANGED IN SUNKEN VERTICAL PANELS FREQUENT USE OF CENTRAL TOWER, WHOSE SUMMIT RECEDES IN A STEPPED PATTERN FLAT ROOF

 SYMMETRY AND BALANCE FOR EACH

ELEVATION TENDENCY FOR BUILDINGS TO BE MONUMENTAL, FORMAL AND HEAVY ORNAMENTATION OF ZIGZAGS, CHEVRONS, SPIRALS, AND STYLIZED PLANT AND ANIMAL MOTIFS.

SMITH HOUSE - One of the few Zigzag Moderne houses in the area in the Los Angeles area and probably one of the greatest. It is very elegant in an extremely elegant neighborhood. Paris would be proud of it."

While Zigzag celebrated modern life, Streamline Moderne looked to a better future. Homes were built in the Streamline Moderne style, but commercial structuresgas stations, diners, bus terminals, storeswere more modest than in the Zigzag style.

Features of the Streamline Moderne style include:

AERODYNAMIC CURVES AND FLOWING FORMS

EMPHASIS ON SIMPLE LINES AND A VERY

CLEAN LOOK LONG HORIZONTAL LINES

 SMOOTH AND CURVED WALL SURFACES

NAUTICAL ELEMENTS SUCH AS PORTHOLES

AND STEEL RAILINGS, OFTEN MARKED BY A SIGNATURE TRIO OF HORIZONTAL SPEED STRIPES SUGGESTING MOTION

Use of new materials, such as glass block, chrome, vitrolite, stainless steel, and neon signage Flat roofs with ledge coping Horizontal bands of windows, often steel casement, set flush with wall surfaces Elements in groups of three

Along with architecture, Streamline Moderne was a style that industrial designers applied to everything, including cars, trains, movie sets, furniture, fashion design, and household appliances. The style quickly went out of fashion during World War II, but there was a renewed interest in Art Deco design in the late 1960s.

The WILTERN HOTEL (1931) and PANTAGES (1929) theaters have facades of stepped-back vertical pylons interspersed with ornamental spandrel panels.

Their interiors are a riot SUNBURST and FACETED GEOMETRIC MOTIFS, including PRISM-LIKE MIRRORS and PRISMATIC FAN VAULTS.

The COCA-COLA BOTTLING PLANT (1936) by ROBERT DERRAH (1895-1946), actually a remodelling, illustrates the STREAMLINE MODERNE.

It includes NAUTICAL MOTIFS such as PORTHOLE WINDOWS, HATCH-LIKE DOORWAYS, and OFFICES REACHED BY WAY OF A PROMENADE DECK.

A particularly rich body of Art Deco work can be found at Miami Beach, Florida, where the international idiom was fused with a local color palette and adapted to the subtropical climate.

These modestly scaled buildings are PAINTED IN VIVID PINKS, GREENS, PEACHES and LAVENDERS that would be garish inland but are delightful here, and are often outfitted with STRONGLY HORIZONTAL SUNSCREENS and BALCONIES and punctuated with DRAMATICALLY VERTICAL ENTRY BAYS and STAIR TOWERS.

Decoration includes stock Art Deco motifs such as SUNBURSTS, but extends to local FLORA and FAUNA, including the ubiquitous MIAMI PALMS and FLAMINGOS.

The Miami Beach Art Deco District

The Art Deco District in Miami Beach contains the largest concentration of 1920s and 1930s resort architecture in the world. These vibrantly colored buildings represent an era when Miami was heavily promoted and developed as a "tropical playground." The Art Deco District was one of the earliest National Register listings to recognize the importance of the architecture of this period

(continue reading: South Beach Art Deco Tours).

Architectural Styles Vernacular Style: 1900-1930's Vernacular is not a style, but rather a common method of early construction in South Florida. The materials and forms encompassed wood frame and masonry construction. These materials and methods were transferred from abroad with the Beach's early settlers. Through time, many of these structures were replaced. Wood Frame construction was most evident in the earliest days of Ocean Beach and reflected a secluded resort-like character.

Wood Frame construction was most evident in the earliest days of Ocean Beach and reflected a secluded resort-like character. Noted for stark simplicity, vernacular structures are usually rectilinear in form with little or no elaboration. Functional elements supply the only elaboration or decoration except that occasionally modest Classical elements were referenced such as the engaged pilasters that were seen on the Atlantic Hotel at 112 Ocean Drive, built in 1915. Most are one and two stories in height with flat, gable or hipped roof and a single story porch extending across the front. Bungalow Style: 1910's - 1930's Bungalows were a popular in Ocean Beach from the earliest development years through the 1930s. Many of these simple structures may have been constructed from mail order house plans gotten from catalogues, but others were designed by local architects as distinguished as V. H. Nellenbogen.

Typically, bungalows were of wood frame construction, one to one and a half stories in height, with gable roofs, overhanging eaves, front porches , and large wood sash windows. They afforded good cross ventilation, a shaded outdoor area, and adapted well to South Florida coastal conditions, generally being elevated two to three feet above grade on foundation walls or masonry piers.
Mediterranean Revival Style: 1910's - 1930's

Mediterranean Revival Style: 1910's - 1930's Mediterranean Revival architecture was the "style of choice" for the first major boom period in Ocean Beach. It's connotation of Mediterranean resort architecture, combining expressions of Italian, Moorish, North African and Southern Spanish themes, was found to be an appropriate and commercially appealing image for the new Floridian seaside resort. During the mid 1910s through the early 1930s the style was applied to hotels, apartment buildings, commercial structures, and even modest residences. Its architectural vocabulary was characterized by stucco walls, low pitched terra cotta and historic Cuban tile roofs, arches, scrolled or tile capped parapet walls and articulated door surrounds, sometimes utilizing Spanish Baroque decorative motifs and Classical elements. Feature detailing was occasionally executed in keystone.

Mediterranean Revival - Art Deco Transitional: 1920's - 1930's "Med-Deco" in Ocean Beach was a synthesis of Mediterranean Revival form and A Art Deco decorative detail. This unique hybrid style became a fascinating bridge between the "familiar" and the "new" as the allure of Art Deco found its way into the Beach's architectural vocabulary. Clean ziggurat roof lines and crisp geometric detailing replaced scrolled parapets, bracketed cornices and Classical features on structures of clear Mediterranean Revival form. Likewise, sloped barrel tile roofs rested gracefully on edifices with spectacular Art Deco entrances and facade treatments.
Some of the most celebrated architects in Miami Beach designed structures in this brief-lived style, including V. H. Nellenbogen, Henry Hohauser and T. Hunter Henderson. The predominant exterior material of Med-Deco was smooth stucco with raised o r incised details. Featured stucco areas were often patterned or scored. Keystone, either natural or filled and colored, was frequently used to define special elements. Windows ranged from wood and steel casement to wood double hung. Art Deco Style: late 1920's - 1930's

Mediterranean Revival Style: 1910's - 1930's Mediterranean Revival architecture was the "style of choice" for the first major boom period in Ocean Beach. It's connotation of Mediterranean resort architecture, combining expressions of Italian, Moorish, North African and Southern Spanish themes, was found to be an appropriate and commercially appealing image for the new Floridian seaside resort. During the mid 1910s through the early 1930s the style was applied to hotels, apartment buildings, commercial structures, and even modest residences. Its architectural vocabulary was characterized by stucco walls, low pitched terra cotta and historic Cuban tile roofs, arches, scrolled or tile capped parapet walls and articulated door surrounds, sometimes utilizing Spanish Baroque decorative motifs and Classical elements. Feature detailing was occasionally executed in keystone. Mediterranean Revival - Art Deco Transitional: 1920's - 1930's "Med-Deco" in Ocean Beach was a synthesis of Mediterranean Revival form and A Art Deco decorative detail. This unique hybrid style became a fascinating bridge between the "familiar" and the "new" as the allure of Art Deco found its way into the Beach's architectural vocabulary. Clean ziggurat roof lines and crisp geometric detailing replaced scrolled parapets, bracketed cornices and Classical features on structures of clear Mediterranean Revival form. Likewise, sloped barrel tile roofs rested gracefully on edifices with spectacular Art Deco entrances and facade treatments. Some of the most celebrated architects in Miami Beach designed structures in this brief-lived style, including V. H. Nellenbogen, Henry Hohauser and T. Hunter Henderson. The predominant exterior material of Med-Deco was smooth stucco with raised o r incised details. Featured stucco areas were often patterned or scored. Keystone, either natural or filled and colored, was frequently used to define special elements. Windows ranged from wood and steel casement to wood double hung. Art Deco Style: late 1920's - 1930's Art Deco is considered one of the first twentieth century architectural styles in America to break with traditional revival forms. It emanated largely from the impact of the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, a design fair celebrating the reconciliation between the decorative arts and advancements in technology and industry. Building forms in the Art Deco style were typically angular and clean, with stepped back facades, symmetrical or asymmetrical massing and strong vertical accenting. The preferred decorative language included geometric patterns, abstracted natural forms, modern industrial symbols and ancient cultural motifs employing Mayan, Egyptian and Indigenous American themes. In Ocean Beach a unique form of Art Deco employed nautical themes as well as tropical floral and fauna motifs. Ocean liners, palm trees, and flamingos graced the exteriors and interiors of the new local architecture. The favored materials for executing this distinctive "art" decor included bas-relief stucco, keystone, etched glass, a variety of metals, cast concrete, patterned terrazzo, and others. Today this distinctive design vocabulary, which further incorporated glass block, vitrolite and stunning painted wall murals, has become the hallmark of Miami Beach's internationally recognized Art Deco gems. Moderne Style - Streamline Moderne: 1930's-1940 As "Art Deco" evolved on the Beach in the 1930s modern transportation and industrial design began to have an even greater impact upon new construction. The "streamlined" character of automobiles, airplanes, trains, buses, liners and even home appliances inspired powerful horizontal design compositions, accentuated by striking vertical features and punctuated by icons of the technological era. Continuous "eyebrows", racing stripe banding, radio tower-like spires, portholes, and deck railings like those found on grand ocean liners, were among the unique features to set this architecture apart from anything before it. The creative incorporation of nautical themes showed this form of Art Deco to be true to its origins in Miami Beach. Smooth, rounded corners often replaced sharp ones on Moderne buildings, especially on corner lots. "Eyebrows" swept around them as did other details. Street corners became inviting architectural focal points, whether the special treatment employed was based upon curves or angles. Post War Transitional Art Deco - Post War Deco: 1960 Post War Deco drew significantly from the form and decorative vocabulary of both early Art Deco in Miami Beach and Moderne. Although single block massing was predominant the emphasis could be placed on either horizontal or vertical composition, dependent upon the size of the structure, the character of the site, and the will of the architect. Frequently, continuous us of eyebrows would be extended to form side or front canopies, either cantilevered or supported on their furthest edge by columns. New decorative materials were introduced which reflected changing tastes nationally, including brick, permastone, and cast architectural block in a variety of "open" patterns. Many of these delightful structures in Ocean Beach paid wonderful tribute to their architectural origins while effectively addressing changing times. Post World War II Modern Style - Post War Modern:1965

The Miami Beach Art Deco District is a one-squaremile area that contains roughly 1,000 buildings which were constructed during the 1930s. The Miami Design Preservation League conducts daily walking tours of the Art Deco District and their guides provide a wealth of information along the way. But, if youd like to explore Miami Beachs art deco design heritage on your own, simply take a stroll up Ocean Drive and down Collins Avenue, and there youll see 30 blocks of the greatest concentration of hotels and apartment houses that date from the 1920s to the 1940s.

Moderne design is generally divided into two very different phases: Art Deco (once referred to as Zig Zag Moderne) of the 1920s, and Streamlined Moderne of the 1930s. The first phase developed out of many sources, from the verticality of Eliel Saarinen to the forms of the Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Dcoratifs et Industriels Modernes of 1925. As a matter of fact, the term Art Deco is actually an abbreviation derived from the words Arts Dcoratifs. Art Deco is characterized by lavish decoration, extravagant colorism, and elaborate eclectic ornamentation.

The second phase, Streamlined Moderne, was based on a machine aesthetic. The term streamlined comes from aerodynamics to imply speed, efficiency, and functionalism. This style is characterized by reductive design, light smooth surfaces, rounded edges, and sparing geometric decoration. Art Deco and Streamlined are not synonymous termsthey are distinctly separate facets of the Style Moderne. Ocean Drive is one of the most picturesque streets on Miami Beach with numerous Art Deco hotels lining the west side of the street north from 5th Street to 14th Place.