Parisian Architecture

Art Deco and the Modern Movement (1918-39)

At the end of World War I, a new aesthetic began to bubble up in Paris. It was optimistic—the world had just survived “the war to end all wars” and people were exuberant. Paris hummed with wealthy visitors and artistic innovations. High-speed ocean liners crisscrossed the Atlantic; Surrealism shocked the art world; radios poured out jazz music. The Modern Age had arrived. Trying to express this freedom and movement, architects responded to the jazzy rhythm with angular shapes reminiscent of the new cruise ships. Their style was termed Industrial Moderne, Jazz Moderne or Streamline Moderne; it was only in the 60s that the term Art Deco was coined, but this is the name that has stuck to the movement. Art Deco first appeared in Paris and reached its greatest heights in New York during the 20s and 30s. World War II put an end to Art Deco’s optimism; the less-flamboyant lines of pure Modernism took over. But at the beginning, in the 1920s in Paris, the two styles overlapped, particularly in private houses designed in newly-developing residential areas of Paris such as Boulogne and Montsouris.

There was a housing boom all over the city, especially at its edges. The city wall of Adolphe Thiers, built in 1851 and made obsolete soon afterwards when the city limits were changed by Haussmann, was finally completely demolished after World War I. The new empty space was quickly filled with housing projects, many of them government-sponsored and built of brick. The new housing was influenced by the sharp angles and setbacks of Art Deco, with decorative brickwork and intelligent layouts. These brick buildings became known as “the red belt,” because they were brick-colored and inhabited by socialist workers, in a belt at the edge of the city.

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