Sunday, September 4, 2011

Things You Should Know About Art Deco

By Alfred Tanya


Miami Beach is a lot a lot more than a tropical paradise as well as a preferred tourist destination, it can be wealthy with history, culture, and some of the most amazing and one of a kind architecture inside the world.

Art Deco may be the most prevalent and recognizable style of architecture in Miami Beach. Art Deco is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris inside the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the Globe War II era.

The Miami Beach Art Deco District contains the largest concentration of Deco resort architecture within the globe, with some thirty blocks of vibrantly colored hotels and apartment houses dating from the 1920s to the 1940s. These buildings represent an era when Miami was heavily promoted and created as a "tropical playground."

Art Deco is considered one of the first twentieth century architectural styles in America to break with conventional revival forms to embrace influences from quite a few diverse styles such as Neoclassical, Constructivism, Cubism, Modernism and Futurism. Creating forms inside the style had been usually 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 (now referred to as South Beach) architects employed a one of a kind form of nearby imagery to create what we now call "Tropical Deco". The style employed nautical themes too as tropical floral and fauna motifs. Ocean liners, palm trees, and flamingos graced the exteriors and interiors of the new neighborhood 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.

Significantly of the Art Deco designs might be attributed to architect Morris Lapidus. His first massive commission was the Miami Beach Sans Souci Hotel, followed closely by the Nautilus, the Di Lido, the Biltmore Terrace, and also the Algiers, all along Collins Avenue, and amounting to the single-handed redesign of an entire district. The hotels were an immediate common good results. Then in 1952 he landed the job of the largest luxury hotel in Miami Beach, the Fontainebleau Hotel, one of one of the most historically and architecturally significant hotels on Miami Beach and believed to be the most significant building of Lapidus's career.

Before the Fontainebleau's 27 colors of paint had dried, Lapidus had his second major commission, the Eden Rock, a luxury hotel to be located suitable next door. Around 1960, Lapidus was commissioned to redesign Lincoln Road. Lapidus's design for Lincoln Road, complete with gardens, fountains, shelters and an amphitheater, reflected the Miami Contemporary Architecture, or "MiMo", style that Lapidus pioneered inside the 1950s. The Road was closed to visitors and became 1 of the nation's 1st pedestrian malls.

Art Deco continues to be a common style among buyers coming to the South Beach marketplace. I've sold additional art deco properties than I can count and I appreciate discovering the distinctive attributes to each Art Deco property...no two becoming exactly the same. I lately closed a sale at Harriet Court on 1508 Pennsylvania Avenue for $385,000. Harriet Court, like quite a few

Art Deco properties, has been completely renovated and elegantly blends the past with the present, encompassing all of today's modern design capabilities and amenities.




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