a generally vertical collection of dwellings
This is an interesting eight storey apartment block in central São Paulo. It has a variety of period details and features slot windows and curving balconies. The neighbouring building, visible on the right in the photo below, also has curving balconies, as well as porthole windows.
Global Art Deco is pleased to have another guest post from the Durban Art Deco Society. Durban is South Africa’s third largest city and has many fine Art Deco buildings, including this one.
Cheviot Court, Durban
This is a striking six-storey apartment building in a prime location on the Berea Ridge, overlooking the city of Durban. Located at 676 Musgrave Road at the corner of Poynton Place, it was designed by architects W S Payne & E O Payne and constructed in 1934. The Streamline Moderne styling is evocative of the fast ocean liners, cars and aeroplanes so admired as the machine age took root in the 1930’s. The building is asymmetric, with large bay windows at right angles at the ends of each floor. A tower rises above the entrance canopy to a decorated flagpole on the skyline. Horizontal lines are created by window sills and eyeshades running the full length of the building on each floor. The entrance canopy is supported on curved-brick pillars, and leads to a simple foyer with zig-zag parquet flooring.
Photos and text © Durban Art Deco Society
This five-storey apartment block constructed in 1937 has a façade which has a perfect balance of horizontal and vertical elements. Located in central Lisbon, the architect was Cassiano Branco who also designed the Victoria Hotel there. He used shallow, rectangular setbacks emerging from a central axis formed of three continuous bevelled bars rising as a fin from just above the entrance up to the roofline. In contrast to the purely rectilinear façade the entry doors are composed of playful triangles and circles.
Located at Paseo de la Alameda 15 at the corner of Calle de Don Armando Palacio Valdés, in central Valencia, this curved corner building is a mixture of commercial and residential. The Alameda Beers restaurant occupies the ground floor.
Sitting just opposite Lisbon’s expansive Parque Eduardo VII (Edward VII Park, named in honour of the UK monarch who visited Portugal in 1903), the building at Avenida Sidonio Pais 18 is one of a cluster of contiguous structures which probably all had the same team of architects. These are most likely buildings from the 1940s and nearly all of them have at least a sculpture over the main entrance.
Avenida Sidonio Pais 18 is a modern building with a Classical touch not only in the window pediments on the exterior but also in its ambitious sculpture programme. On either side of the front entrance are vertical groups of four carved, stone reliefs. These depict in fine Art Deco style eight of the nine Muses, those Classical personifications of the arts and knowledge including Clio, the Muse of history and Euterpe, the Muse of flutes and lyric poetry.
We are fortunate to have another guest post from the Durban Art Deco Society. Durban is South Africa’s third largest city and has many fine Art Deco buildings, including this one.
Berea Court
This is a multi-storey 41-apartment building with excellent detailing, designed for the Langton family by Alfred Arthur Ritchie McKinlay around 1930 and located at 399 Berea Road. The stucco finish has good mouldings in authentic Art Deco style. A stylised theme of wings is evident in the design, with geometric string courses. The central balcony at high level is richly decorated with a sunburst pattern and forms a high level focus to Berea Road.
Fluted pilasters rise through the façade to a crenellated parapet with lion features. The entrance below has an African feel to the surround mouldings. There is a well-designed rear elevation with cantilevered walkways and an amusing range of stained glass windows to the lift shaft, and flat entrances, which have original milk-bottle alcoves. The top floor is open for water tanks and the lift shaft.
The building is used for student accommodation and is well maintained by the owner.
Photos and text © Durban Art Deco Society
We are pleased to have another guest post for this blog from the Durban Art Deco Society. Durban is South Africa’s third largest city and has many Art Deco buildings.
Enterprise Building, Durban
This eight-storey, 1931 apartment building, designed by A A Ritchie McKinley, has a classic Art Deco design. It is located at 47 Samora Machel (Aliwal) Street. The distinctive elevational treatment is in the form of a rich range of stylised geometric animal and abstract figures. Griffons and zig-zag forms at high level with Mayan type heads and a superb eagle form over the entrance. The “fasces” motifs (bundle of rods, often tied, with an axe as an emblem of power, which were carried by lictors, ancient Roman officials, before the superior magistrates) might indicate sympathy with the advent of Mussolini on the part of the architect or client.
Photos and text © Durban Art Deco Society
A striking building in Lisbon’s Saldanha district, this five-storey mix of retail and residential sits on the corner of the major artery that is Avenida António Augusto de Aguiar and the Rua Augusto dos Santos. Among the Art Deco details featured on it, highlighted in white against the prevailing green, are three different geometric sunbursts, one in wrought iron on a balcony and the other two below windows.
If you ever decide to visit Rio de Janeiro you will have to visit Copacabana beach, and maybe you will stay in the area. If this should happen you will inevitably encounter the Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacabana as it is one of the most important thoroughfares in the area. Check out the building at number 252 which is called Edifício Itahy, constructed in 1932. It was designed by São Paulo born architect Arnaldo Gladosch, and the spectacular entrance watched over by the dark haired mermaid you see here was created in 1935 by Luiz Correia de Araújo.
Brighton Art Deco apartment block Astra House was completed in 1938. It is tall for a UK seaside building at ten storeys high, with 61 flats rising above a ground floor of retail premises. The top two storeys step back and are thus less visible. It has continuous bay windows from the second to sixth floors.
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