Final Draft Extended Essay.docx - The Roaring Twenties...

The Roaring Twenties Influence on Art Deco
To what extent did “The Roaring Twenties” influence the Art Deco
architectural style in William Van Alen’s Chrysler Building?
IB Extended Essay
Subject: Visual Arts
World Count: 3665

INTRODUCTION 3
WHO WAS WILLIAM VAN ALLEN? 5
THE NINETEEN-TWENTIES CONTEXT 7
ART DECO ARCHITECTURE 9
EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR SPACES OF THE CHRYSLER BUILDING 12
CONCLUSION 15
REFERENCE SOURCES 16
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INTRODUCTION
Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness 1
A terraced house living on the outskirts of a city can be able to withstand for generations if it was built
under the right conditions. A house can grow into a knowledgeable witness: on late nights, it listens to
whispered conferences in the kitchen; it sees swaddled babies brought back from the hospital; it
oversees homework completion on late afternoons; it experiences the winter evenings when its
windows are cold as frozen groceries, and midsummer dims when its bricks hold the warmth of joy 2 .
To some a house is a story, a time-machine, a piece of ancient artifact.
Architecture, unlike the other many other art fields, is a mixture of both art and science. It has the
ability to captivate works from centuries ago; the climate, the land contour, religion, social, economic,
and political condition of the time-period, can all be told through a piece of architecture. The
architecture style of a work is essential to future generations, for an analysis of the design tells
intriguing contextual stories. This essay thus seed to analyse his most remarkable work, the Chrysler
Building, to exemplify the exceptionalism embedded in Art Deco architectural conception, alluding to
the interconnectedness of architectural construction and contextual situation.
William Van Allen was one of the many renowned architects, best known for his design of The
Chrysler Building. He was born in New York in the late eighteen hundred. He attended Pratt Institute,
while working with other architects. After he finished his studies, he continued to work for New York
Firms, most notably working on the “Hotel Project” project in 1902 along with architects Clinton &
Russell. He was rewarded with the Paris Prize scholarship, leading to his interest in contemporary
architecture styles: modernism. His architectural career was mostly centred around modern
1 Frank Gehry (1929), American Canadian Architect
2 De Botton, Alain. Architecture of Happiness . Penguin Books, 2007.
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architecture and unlike other American students who had an international education, William Van
Alen came back with zero books, a way in which he described his wishes for architecture: “No old
stuff for me! Me, I’m new! Avanti!”. He wished to innovate in the world of architecture instead of
repeating classical structures of arches, columns and corniches 3 .