What is Art Deco Architecture? | Architecture 101

At the start of the 20th century, the world was in a state of rapid transformation. Cities were growing taller, cars were becoming a common sight, and the rhythm of jazz was setting a new pace for a society in flux. Following the Great War, life accelerated. The heavy, historicist ornamentation of the 19th century no longer captured the energy of this new, industrial age and a new visual language was emerging. One that favored geometry, Abstraction and Controlled Compositions. This was the birth of Art Deco, an architectural expression of the Roaring Twenties. It was a style that reflected a world reinventing how it lived, produced, and inhabited space. But how did these shifts in art and culture actually take shape in our buildings? And what exactly defines the aesthetic we now call Art Deco? In this edition of ArchDaily's Architecture 101. We will explore it. To begin with, we need to go back to the 1910s, when movements such as Cubism and Futurism began introducing abstraction. They offered an early glimpse of where art was heading, toward new forms of visual expression where straight lines became more prominent. During this period, there was also a clear shift away from the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau, which emphasized the natural world, craftsmanship, and continuous ornament. On the other side, Art Deco began to embrace a new reality shaped by industrial production, while reinterpreting it through more refined forms. It also drew from a range of influences, including French neoclassicism and ancient Egyptian art, which regained attention after early 20th century excavations and the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922. This transition became especially visible in 1925, when Paris hosted the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts. The event brought together more than 20 countries to present a new modern style across architecture, interior design, furniture, glass, jewelry, and other decorative arts. From this moment, the approach began to spread more widely. It brought together geometry, new materials, and a more restrained use of ornament and it soon appeared across different fields from architecture to fashion, transportation, and graphic design in various international contexts. Interestingly, the term Art Deco didn't actually exist at the time. It wasn't until 1968, decades after the movement peaked, that British historian Bevis Hillier coined the name in his book Art Deco of the 20s and 30s, providing a unified name for this distinct visual language that defined an era. Even before the 1925 exhibition, signs of this transition were already visible in cities. In 1913, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées opened in Paris, designed by Auguste Perret, a building often seen as a precursor to Art Deco that already hinted at what architecture would look like in the years to come. Its use of exposed reinforced concrete instead of decorative cladding, together with the reliefs by Antoine Bourdelle, introduced a different approach to composition. In the years that followed, from the late 1910s into the early 1920s, other buildings in France and the United States began exploring the same direction, without yet being defined as a style. These design decisions were already testing ideas that would later become central to Art Deco. At this moment, even the way buildings were built was changing. Art Deco became closely linked to industry, using materials such as structural steel, reinforced concrete, and glass, along with finishes like aluminum, chrome, stainless steel, and lacquer, which became more widely used during the interwar period. This shift also changed how ornament was understood. Instead of being added on top of a building, as in Art Nouveau, ornament began to be integrated into the architecture itself. It appeared through reliefs, inlays, variations in finishes, and geometric patterns that became part of the building's overall design. By the 1920s, Art Deco had begun to spread beyond Europe, reaching the United States, where some buildings were completed before the turn of the decade, as the style was fueled by the economic growth of the Roaring 20s. In cities like New York, this shift was most visible in the increasing height of buildings, which became one of its clearest expressions. Within this emerging skyline, a few buildings came to define the visual identity of Art Deco in New York. Among them, the Chrysler Building stood out almost immediately. Completed in 1930 and designed by American architect William Van Allen, who had previously studied in Paris, it combined height with a distinctive formal language. Its silhouette tapers upward, the use of stainless steel reinforces its brightness, and its overall composition emphasizes a strong sense of vertical ascent. Just a year later, the Empire State Building designed by the firm Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon and completed in 1931 pushed this logic even further. Rising to 102 floors and built in just over a year, it became the tallest building in the world at the time. Its form responds directly to the 1916 Zoning Law, with step setbacks that organize its mass as it rises. From a formal point of view, its Art Deco expression is more restrained than in the Chrysler Building, yet it remains present in key moments such as the crown, the entrances, and especially the interiors. The main lobby, finished in marble and aluminum, introduces geometric reliefs and characteristic motifs that extend the language of the façade inward. Around the same period, this language also expanded beyond isolated buildings into larger coordinated Thanks for watching. The Rockefeller Center, developed from 1930 under the initiative of John D. Rockefeller Jr., shifted the focus from single structures to a unified urban complex. Here, Art Deco operated at the scale of an ensemble, integrating public spaces, pedestrian connections, and a mix of uses that included offices, retail, and entertainment. Alongside these large-scale developments, Art Deco also found a more intimate expression in the interiors of New York's major hotels. This shift in scale was also visible in more interior-focused settings. In the Waldorf Astoria New York, completed in 1931 on Park Avenue and designed by Schultze and Weaver, Art Deco moved into the interior spaces of the building with polished materials, clear geometries, and carefully arranged details shaping the lobbies, lounges, and transitional areas. This development, however, was not uniform across all regions. In Miami, between the late 1920s and 1930s, Art Deco took on a distinct form, one that leaned more toward color and horizontality. The use of shades, smooth surfaces, rounded corners, and certain nautical references shaped a variant that would later become known as Tropical Deco or Streamline Moderne. This interpretation responded to a specific context marked by the subtropical climate, proximity to the ocean, and a booming economy linked to tourism. Thus, as it spread throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Art Deco adapted to different cultural, climatic, and economic contexts, giving rise to multiple expressions. In Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, this process was evident during the 1930s, when the style was incorporated into expanding cities, linking to new forms of density, the modernization of infrastructure, and mixed-use developments. In 1927, the Anhui building was completed as one of Rio de Janeiro's first large-scale skyscrapers. Its unprecedented height fundamentally reshaped the city's skyline, introducing a new era of vertical architecture to the region. In 1930, Havana also underwent this same transformation with the Bacardi Building, which established a new high-rise presence within the city, standing out for its stepped central tower and the use of ceramic and granite. And even beyond the Americas, Art Deco also found its place in Southeast Asia. In Mumbai, for example, the Eros Cinema, opened in 1938 and designed by Sohrabji Bedwar, emerged during a period of architectural transformation in the city. Its presence helps us understand how this style, conceived in France in the early 20th century, expanded and adapted decades later to very different contexts. Despite its expansion, and as is often the case with many movements, Art Deco began to lose momentum toward the end of the 1940s, and more clearly during the 1950s. At that time, the modern movement began to take hold with a different approach, focused on the elimination of ornamentation, standardization, and structural efficiency, largely in response to the conditions left in the wake of World War II. Today, its presence remains relevant, not as a direct repetition, but as an aesthetic that reappears from time to time in different projects and forms. It can be seen both in renovation projects, where buildings regain part of their original character or are adapted to new uses, and in contemporary designs that draw on some of its geometries, patterns, and materials. Seen from this perspective, its presence also reveals the cultural influence that Art Deco came to have in many cities and in their architectural heritage. Beyond its forms, it speaks to a specific moment in time and to a way of understanding modernity that, in various ways, continues to resonate like an echo within our architectural heritage. So, after this tour, do you think Art Deco was a true innovation or more a matter of style? Do you have a favorite Art Deco building? We'd love to read your thoughts in the comments. If you want to keep exploring these topics, subscribe to our YouTube channel and find more content under the Architecture 101 section on ArchDaily.com, following the link in the caption. Thanks for watching and see you in the next episode of Architecture 101.