Art Deco - Sounds like wish

The word ‘angular’ makes me think ‘Art Deco’, the popular visual arts style of the 1920s and 30s that embraced the hard edges of industry, machines and man-made structures rather than the soft, curving, natural lines of the previously popular ‘Art Nouveau’ style. Art Deco buildings are recognisable by their geometric, often symmetrical, forms and decorations: repeated lines, zigzags, steps, and ziggurat shapes. Here’s a photo from Dad’s WWII collection from 1941/42, showing the covered market in Nairobi, built in 1932. It’s now called the City Market.

The City Market building in central Nairobi has the classic features of Art Deco architecture: symmetrically stepped walls and straight lines at every turn – even the clock is octagonal. Well, that was in the 1940s; the clock is no longer there, as you can see in the photo below, taken in 2011.

6202713873_247f1cd912_b — City Market, Nairobi, Kenya, 2011. Photo courtesy Richard Portsmouth, Flickr, www.kanyawegi-uk.org/index.aspx

How quiet it was in the 1940s, with a neatly hedged roundabout and only a few cars parallel-parked beside the building. Images online of the City Market now, including the one above, show a lot of people and traffic, and angle parking to fit more in. Photos online of the interior are full of colour and activity, showing local people buying fresh food, particularly meat and fish, fresh flowers, handcrafts and souvenirs for the tourists.

Inside, it’s an open space where the windowed walls step inwards, with unadorned concrete arches supporting the vaulted ceiling. Pivoting windows on both sides allow air movement and cross ventilation (see an enlarged view of them in the header above), and the vertical strips of louvres allow hot air to escape through the higher openings and cooler air to enter at the bottom. It was ‘green’ architecture long before sustainability became so important. There’s an interesting site here with more photos, as well as plans and information about the energy-efficient design that keeps the building cool. It’s very interesting reading.

I have to admit that while I have a few items of Art Deco style inherited from my parents, it’s not my first choice of decoration or architecture. Give me instead the organic forms of Art Nouveau, the stylised vines whipping asymmetrically around doors and windows and up and down balustrades. Give me environmentally sustainable curves any day.

Thanks Daily Post photo challenge for the angular prompt.

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After spending time in Auckland, New Zealand, and driving through the volcanic plateau, we moved on for a great week in Hawke’s Bay on the east coast of the North Island. Again, as last week, I found broad strokes of individual colours wherever we went. There was plenty of:

BLUE

A matching blue bay and sky: the view from our accommodation. Most days.

YELLOW

As in Auckland, there are lots of white houses in Hawke’s Bay, especially the older wooden houses, the type that survive earthquakes. But there are plenty of creative individuals living here, like the neighbours who built a house with a cylinder attached and painted it with a yellow that says ‘look at me!’.

PINK

Red Valerian is a beautiful flower that’s not red but rather a couple of shades of pink, and springs up in any crack where a seed has fallen. In New Zealand I saw it growing in most gardens, jutting out of retaining walls, through rockfall-catching wire on cliff faces, and on the seashore. Some call it a weed, some call it a colourful filler. No doubt it needs to be controlled. I took this photo in drizzle under a grey sky. The blue days had passed…

Valerian on beachfront, Hawke's Bay, NZ — Red Valerian on beachfront, and kite surfer in the rain, Hawke’s Bay, NZ

ORANGE

There are also flowers around Hawke’s Bay which there should be more of, like Bird of Paradise with its orange crests.

Bird of Paradise, Napier, NZ — Bird of Paradise near the Aquarium, Napier, NZ

PURPLE

When we climbed the moist leaf-littered paths that wound uphill through Tiffen Park, we saw masses of blue and purple flowers growing wild. I don’t know what they’re called but I hope they’re not invaders. Here we were about a third of the way up the hill. When you go to New Zealand, you go up a lot of steps, steep streets and driveways, hills and cliffs. But going down feels really good!

COLOURLESS

On the walls and in parks in Napier, there are quotations written or sculpted which offer promise and hope. They are signs that this town has not only revived after a horrendous earthquake back in 1931 but is thriving partly because of it. The town was rebuilt in Art Deco, the style of the time, and today it is unique as an example of this architecture constructed in the two-year period 1931/32. The quotation below which I saw painted in an otherwise interest-free alley is a reminder that good things can come from bad. If you can read backwards, that is.

Thoreau quotation, alley wall, Napier, NZ

CREAM

And here’s an example of one of the buildings constructed in the Art Deco style after the earthquake and recently refurbished, attracting masses of tourists each week. It’s open to the public and just as handsome inside.

BLACK

We went on a two-hour trip with a Maori elder, Robert McDonald, up to a peak, Te Mata, where he recounted the history of Maori in New Zealand. In the photo below he stands next to his tribe’s pou whenua, or land post. Its face is carved like that of Robert’s ancestor, one of the Waimārama chiefs who signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1841 with the European settlers. At the bottom of the second photo below, (actually the Waimārama Maori Tours information card), is his mark made on the Treaty and the words he spoke, ‘te tohu o te tangata’ which mean ‘the mark of the man’. His facial tattoo indicates his status as an important chief of his tribal group. The portrait was painted by Gottfried Lindauer, an Austrian artist who painted many Maori portraits in the late nineteenth century, some of which I saw in the Auckland Art Gallery and more of which you can see here. They’re stunning!

Tag: Art Deco

Weekly photo challenge: Angular

The colours of New Zealand: Hawke’s Bay, North Island