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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-01/streamline-moderne-architecture-melbourne/103619686>
'Mitchell House, in Melbourne's CBD, is a building. It doesn't move.
But its curved and aerodynamic lines give the impression that it could cut
through air or water like a knife and that's exactly the idea the architect had
in mind when he put pencil to paper nearly 90 years ago.
It looks like it wasn't meant to stand still.
Mitchell House is one of Australia's finest examples of Streamline Moderne
architecture — a style that had its heyday in the mid 1930s, when the world was
coming out of the Great Depression and looking ahead to a brighter future.
Moving forward, if you like.
If you want to give the impression of motion in a stationary object, what
better way than to make it look like something that was designed to travel -
and that's the very essence of Streamline Moderne.
The streamlining doesn't really serve any design purpose other than to make the
building pleasing to look at.
As University of Melbourne architecture professor Philip Goad explained, they
were designed to capture the spirit of the time.
"In the 1930s, ideas of speed and moving forward were seen as an idea of
recovery from the Great Depression but also the idea of progress," Professor
Goad said.
"There were lots of world records being broken in speed in ships, air flight,
car travel and the like and buildings, in terms of streamlining, started to
develop curves and sheer surfaces."
The excitement, luxury and modernity of ocean travel was exactly what
architects were trying to capture and what better way to do that than design
buildings that look like big boats?'
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
