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.

«By the time of the Paris exhibition of 1925 from which Art Deco took its name, the idea that an interior and its furnishings should form a complete design — a «total look» — dominated the thinking of both designers and their clients. Studios began to emerge to serve the needs of a design and style-conscious middle-class. This text displays the flourishing design ingenuity through contemporary photographs and illustrations of selected interiors complemented with modern photographs of individual pieces. It traces the sylistic evolution and dominant motifs of Deco, the triumph of the 1925 exhibition and the pure «high style» of the Paris ensembliers; the growth of Streamline Moderne offshoots in the US; the international revival of Deco as a decorative style for a new generation of post-modern designers; and the restoration of many Art Deco interiors to their original state.»