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If we understand by “modern” architecture that which profits from the successes of industry, by using the new materials and methods of construction of the time, in order to carry out their new programmes, then the Exhibition of 1900 truly marked the decline of “modernism”. In France, the 19th century, in spite of its taste for formulas borrowed from previous eras, was marked by strong and original works. Progress in metallurgy, a consequence of the development of public transport infrastructure, had drawn attention to the varied possibilities and real beauty of iron. From Henri Labrouste to Victor Baltard, and Paul Sédille to Émile André, architects used it unreservedly for the construction of public libraries, market halls, stations, department stores, and museums. With the Eiffel Tower, the Machine Gallery, and the palaces of Jean-Camille Formigé, the Exhibition of 1889 dedicated a lengthy and persevering effort to the cause. Nevertheless, eleven years later, despite a few exceptions, the retrograde tendencies dominated.

William van Alen, Chrysler Building, entrance hall, 1927–1930.

New York.

Is it necessary to recall to which point the multiple implementations of science, steam, hydraulic force, electricity, and the reciprocating engine modified the conditions of life? Must we discuss the progress of transport systems, the development of industrial and commercial enterprises, the evolution of social ideas, or how health concerns altered the way everything was viewed? By observing these causes one by one, we would find the origin of buildings whose modest beginnings aroused the admiration of previous generations and which were, in comparison, quite varied from the boldest expectations of a hundred years ago: stations, hotels, factories, department stores, housing estates, schools, public swimming pools – so many projects which, despite the many years of stagnation due to war, stimulated the imagination of architects in every country.

The layout, structure, and façade of antique houses had changed; there is nothing better than a house to reveal the customs of a country and a time period. A typical house of the 1920s has various floors, distributed between tenants or landlords, of the space. The interior distribution most clearly reflected everyone’s new needs. Using thicker walls, the architect was able to provide a whole system of ducts and piping for smoke, water, gas, electricity, and steam, a vacuum system to ensure that the “rented box” became, according a very visual word, a “dwelling machine”. In the early 20th century, in all the relatively opulent buildings, the narrow old vestibule evolved into a spacious gallery, an example first exhibited by Charles Garnier. Toilets and bathrooms got bigger, often at the expense of the bedroom or the nearly obsolete living room. The dining-room and living rooms co-habit, separated by a half-wall, though still considered to be only one room. Where necessary, the number of rooms would be reduced in order to obtain, on an equal surface, some larger areas with better ventilation. Bold theorist of new architecture, Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, offers the following advice in his Manual of the Dwelling:

Demand that the bathroom, fully sunlit, be one of the largest rooms in the apartment, the old living room for example. With full-length windows, opening, if possible, onto a terrace for sunbathing, a porcelain washbasin, a bath-tub, showers, and gym equipment. In the adjacent room: a walk-in wardrobe for dressing and undressing. Do not undress in your bedroom. It is not very clean and it creates a distressing disorder. Demand one big room in place of all the living rooms. If you can, put the kitchen under the roof, to avoid odours. Demand a garage for cars, bicycles, and motorbikes from your owner, one per apartment. Ask for the servants’ quarters to be on the same floor. Do not pen your servants in under the roofs.

One should note that the writer of this catechism would prefer bare walls and replaces the cumbersome pieces of furniture commonly exposed to dust with wall cupboards or built-in closets. Our need for outside air and light translates in the number, shape, and dimension of bay windows, using bow – and oriel windows which increase brightness, available surface area, and also allow for enfilade views, such as those seen from old watch towers. Fake decorated plating on giant pilasters are no longer of fashion, instead, a careful study of the interior distribution of space and the height of the ceilings, so as more modern architects can seek to unite the entire construction and give life to its façade. As early as 1912, Henri Sauvage found another very original solution: a tiered house in which no floor deprives the lower floors of air or light, where each inhabitant is at home, on his terrace which may be full of shrubs and flowers.

Heinsbergen Decorating Company, Two designs for decorative panels for the Pantages Theater, c. 1929.

Watercolour on paper. Upper part of the border above the fireproof curtain of the apron.

Pantages Theater, Los Angeles.

Heinsbergen Decorating Company, Project for the ceiling of the Pantages Theater, c. 1929.

Watercolour on paper.

Anton Skislewicz, Plymouth Hotel, 1940.

Miami Beach.

Individual homes of cheaper construction are better suited for new experiments than large constructions built for rental purposes. At this time, one could easily have believed that because of the high price of building sites in the cities and because of the housing-shortage crisis, private mansions, enclosed between houses that rise to any height, would gradually disappear. But the periphery, or the suburbs, of large cities, remains an option; cars brought inhabitants closer to the centre. The housing shortage, a consequence of the interruption of construction caused by the war, and the temporary uncertainty of the value of money determined the revival and even proliferation around major urban centres; apart from the private mansion, the word would often be considered pretentious, at least referring to the small, family house. Here, a few young architects, such as Robert Mallet-Stevens, André Lurçat, Jean-Charles Moreux, and Henri Pacon, applied, with an intransigence which often does not exclude taste, their principles of rational distribution and construction. Thanks to bay windows that span the length of a room, obscure angles are avoided. Although they banished all decoration, they were concerned about practical details which were carefully studied: interior blinds, sliding doors and windows, saving space by not having to install cumbersome shutters. Uncluttered rooms, for them, meant supreme elegance.

To carry out these various projects, from large factories to small houses, the architect takes advantage of the industry’s achievements. Materials are provided to him cheaply due to more time efficient working methods. The invaluable invention of plywood, which – unlike natural wood – does not warp over large areas, offered new facilities for the execution of panelling and doors. Rolled steel, the newest innovation to come out of factories, was more lightweight and resistant than its predecessors; they are invaluable to the halls of department stores and openwork façades of commercial buildings. They are also used in houses for window joinery; metal allows more light to stream through than wood. However, iron has well-known defects. For example, it oxidises if it is not protected by a coating and it requires constant monitoring, which can be expensive to maintain. One would agree with Auguste Perret when he said: “If man were to suddenly disappear, the steel and iron buildings would not be long in following them.”

Fortuitously invented in 1849 by Joseph Monnier, a gardener of Boulogne, improved by the research of Joseph-Louis Lambot, cement or reinforced concrete consists of a mixture of cement, sand, and stones coating a steel reinforcement. The stones then act as a part of the inert material, like grease-remover mixed with earth in large ceramic containers. The relationship between the ratio of steel expansion and cement allows the concrete to lengthen while following the deformations of metal without falling apart, so that, in essence, the reinforced concrete behaves like a single entity. Reinforced concrete is well-suited for finer work. Cement hardens quickly, but it is breakable, making it better to use for posts and beams rather than hollow blocks because the works can be altered after a few days. The speed of its creation is comparable in speed to the assembly of iron frames which were prepared in advance with expensive machinery. Concrete made with clinker is less resistant to the pickaxe than granular cement and, hence, invaluable to temporary buildings. Used for roofs, floors, and partitions due to its light weight, it protects against heat and cold and often decreases the excessive resonance which comes with reinforced concrete constructions. The strengthened stone is a mixture of many materials, which makes it suitable for façade renovation. Whatever its varieties, this resistant material allows the fast construction of a structure in which the use of other materials might make the project more difficult and ultimately destroy it. A work thus built is an artificial monolith. It has justly been compared to the concrete buildings of Rome and Byzantium, where tensile brick framework played a role analogous to iron and concrete.

The consequences of this discovery, from the point of view of construction, can well be seen: extraordinarily long lintels, long-ranging, continuous arcs made from a single piece, and strong and slender posts. The obstruction of the fulcrums is kept to a minimum much more easily than in Gothic constructions. Whilst the intersecting ribs required buttresses and flying buttresses to balance it out, the monolithic framework in reinforced concrete holds without external stays. The walls which do not support any weight but are mere partition walls, can be removed on the whim of the architect. He can replace a solid wall with a double wall to lock in an insulating air pocket. Engineers were the first to understand the part reinforced concrete could play in architecture. Anatole de Baudot, who had already preached its virtues through his teachings, employed it at the end of the 19th century at the Lycée Lakanal and the Church of Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre. He was only in the wrong to abuse narrow curves, whereas his technique was particularly suitable for rectilinear forms. Immediately after him, Charles Génuys gave reinforced concrete an increasingly important standing, in 1892 and 1898, in the factories of Armentières and Boulogne-on-Seine, in 1907, in a private mansion in Auteuil, and afterwards in his constructions for the national railway. Louis Bonnier, who implemented it in 1911 for the lintels, floors, and staircases of the school complex of the rue de Grenelle, reserving brickwork for the façades, made use of it on a large scale in 1922 and 1923 in the great nave of the swimming pool built at Butte-aux-Cailles. At the same time, Charles Plumet made the judicious choice to use it for the new metro stations. Tony Garnier who, already dreaming of reinforced concrete in the shade of the Villa Medici, was able to construct some of his grandest designs out of this material, as part of the major works of the town of Lyon. The terraces of the Lycée Jules Ferry, designed by Pacquet, are made of reinforced concrete, as are the arcs of the departure hall of Biarritz railway station by Dervaux, the cupola of the Boucherie Economique by Alfred Agache, the large roofs of the Galleries Lafayette by Chanut, and the pillars and the vaults of the Church of Saint-Dominique by Gaudibert. Savage used it for the framework of his house with tiered steps from the rue de Vavin and in a building on the Boulevard Raspail; Boileau, in the two basements of new the appendix of Le Bon Marché; Danis, in the framework and the staircase of the Pasteur museum in Strasbourg; Bonnemaison, in his rental properties. In the Church of Saint-Louis in Vincennes, Droz and Marrast combined it with grinding stone and brick. Inside the Church of Saint-Leon in Paris, Leon Brunet adorned it with beautifully laid out bricks. At the very moment when the Exhibition opened, Deneux started to produce the amazing framework of Rheims Cathedral consisting of 17,800 elements moulded on-site, then assembled, put up, and fitted together without the help of bolts or metal parts.

Claude Beelman, Eastern Columbia Building, 1930.

Clad in glazed turquoise terracotta tiles and copper panels. Los Angeles.

As for the works of Auguste and Gustave Perret – the house of the rue Franklin (1902), the garage of the rue de Ponthieu (1905), the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1911–1913), the Church of Notre-Dame du Raincy, the Sainte Chapelle made of reinforced concrete (1922–1923), the tower of the Exhibition of Grenoble (1925) – all of these were built after considering the behaviour of this new material. As Paul Jamot wrote, these buildings attest “that a building which is governed solely by the systematic use of reinforced concrete, with the greatest possible savings of material and labour, [can] be beautiful in itself and, in spite of the absence of any superfluous ornament, be a work of art”. Which forms are thus born most naturally from reinforced concrete? Simple and large ones. As it lends itself to ample vaults, it especially restores to honour the horizontal line. The section of pillars gives it an austere elegance. Bases are no longer necessary as the column sticks straight out of the ground. No more capitals, as the beam and column are made from the same material. The capital, useful in the construction of foundations in order to distribute the weight of the architrave or the lintel amongst the supporting columns, became superfluous in a monolithic system. On the façades, no more horizontal projections except those of some rectangular canopies and sometimes, in order to finish the wall, the hem of a narrow frieze to underlines a distinct shadow.

Pierre Patout, Hôtel d’un Collectionneur, at the 1925 Paris Exhibition, with its frieze La Danse, by Joseph Bernard, above the porch.

The walls are nothing but large empty surfaces. However, the reinforced concrete is well-suited for coatings. The marble panels can be fixed more firmly to it than to brick. It admits encrusted stoneware tiles, mosaics which are composed in advance at the base of the wall, stuck together with cement, the reliefs taking shape in the moulds. It offers a vast field of possibilities for the fresco. But it is by its sparse appearance, its blunt edges, by the harmony of the large areas exposed, or those hidden from the light that its most fervent supporters intend to stir our emotions. At most it is polished, in order to soften the roughness of it, or the colour is varied by ochre, grey, blue, pink, or green plastering, which seems to be a part of it. Reinforced concrete, a combination of materials, was already widely used in many countries across the globe. The Exhibition comprised, in the foreign as well as in the French section, a presentation of models, drawings and photographs of recently built works or works in the process of being built; however, its display was limited. The buildings erected for the Exhibition itself account for the greater part of Class I. To what extent does this architectural framework, where decorative arts represented real life as closely as possible, reflect contemporary architecture? There was no revelation comparable with those built for the Exposition Universelle of 1889, works like the Eiffel Tower and the Gallerie des Machines (Machinery Hall). However, there were many examples of intelligence, knowledge, ingenuity, talent, a serious understanding of the art of building, a deep sensitivity, and a sober taste, which revealed a progression of trends over the previous twenty or twenty-five years. To judge these buildings equitably, it is initially necessary to take into account the conditions imposed.

Panoramic view of the 1925 Paris Exhibition, photograph taken facing the Alexandre III bridge, 1925.

Postcard. Private collection.

Robert Mallet-Stevens, Tourist information pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exhibition.

Ink and watercolour on paper.

Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris.

A house of more than one storey does not lend itself easily to the flow of the crowd. A pavilion anticipates it: hence a certain width of doors and passages, and an increased number of buildings (without ceasing to be accessible), yet keeping some of the mystery through pricking curiosity as to what lay behind the closed façades. Others, such as the houses of the former Soviet Union, and the factories of Copenhagen, Limoges, the Grand Maison de Blanc department store, and the Diamanteries, attracted the public with their outside windows, similar to shop window-displays. Lastly, others presented various compromises between these two extremes. Particular constraints, such as limiting the architects’ freedom, put their talent to the test. At the entrance of the Esplanade des Invalides, an underground station prohibited the digging of the ground deep below the surface. It is important to note that the architect Pierre Patout managed to balance the pylons of the monumental Porte de la Concorde without the help of foundations, whereas Boileau and Sauvage had to distribute the weight of both of the pavilions of Le Bon Marché and Le Printemps on four of the cast iron columns of the station of Les Invalides.

Various metals were implemented. The woodwork apparent on the Japanese pavilion contributed to its particular appearance, as with the elegant windows of the pavilion of the Manufacturers of Copenhagen, built with wooden planks, rafters, pine battens, and the Sabot – or clog – maker’s house, a work by Gabriel Guillemonat. Brickwork characterised the typical houses of the north-eastern French towns of Roubaix and Tourcoing, along with those of Denmark and the Netherlands, and lastly those of Italy – to which the brick owed its blond colour. Stonework was represented, with infinite artistic talent, by the model that the School of the Paris employers’ federation of building, cement, and reinforced concrete contractors had carried out and displayed in the “teaching” group, according to the drawings of Pierre Paquet. This model of a pavilion, dedicated to rest in a sea of leisure, was so well studied and carried out stone by stone to such perfection, that it was worth building to scale. In the library, a clad iron ceiling shed a generous light on the books. In the domed vestibule of the pavilion of Nancy, the architects had achieved a decorative effect from the steel elements and connecting rivets. On the lintels of the covered walkway of the Esplanade des Invalides, Charles Plumet left the iron beams exposed, acting as both a structural component and decoration. Plaster naturally played a great part. Maurice Dufrêne deserves credit for acknowledging this material frankly in the shops of the Alexandre III Bridge. In the construction of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Auguste Perret was clearly biased in favour of temporary materials: timber posts supporting a reinforced concrete frame, with a timber frame on the inside, and coated with thick plaster.

On the whole, reinforced concrete dominated the event. Entire constructions, such as the tourist information pavilion or the rest stop pavilion for automobile drivers owed their lines to it. Others borrowed their entire framework from it, like, for example, the pavilion of the Netherlands whose unexpected lighting would have been impossible to realise without its contribution. Elsewhere, architects had been content with imitations of precarious material, forgetting that reinforced concrete is not necessarily blocky and can assume, on the contrary, a certain elegance. Even if the Exhibition did not help the new concept of construction progress on a technical level, the date is marked in the history of its diffusion. It accustomed the eyes to its bold spans, its simple shapes, and its large cantilever overhangs. It established its recognition.

Louis-Hippolyte Boileau, Pomone pavilion for Bon Marché at the 1925 Paris Exhibition.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were many attacks against the decorative arts. At the dawn of the last century, architects and decorators took liberties with decorative fantasy. They claimed to have based their style on the visual development of themes borrowed from flora or on the use of sinuous lines which they imposed on pieces of furniture as well as on houses, stone, wood, and metal. A backlash was inevitable. As people had grown accustomed to the bare beauty of machines, the reaction had the character of a puritan reform. A well-known manifesto of the Austrian architect Adolphe Loos, Ornament and Crime, became the bible for a whole group of young artists. “The ornament of an ordinary object,” Loos essentially said, “is, like tattooing, a sign of cruelty or degeneration. It is a criminal waste of time, money, and energy.” Loos foretells of a civilisation where “the streets of the cities will shine out like large, very white walls”.

In general, the architects estimated that discrete decoration, judiciously placed and carried out tastefully, would animate and enrich the materials. The beauty of the bare parts must be appreciated, as they, themselves, give all their value to the decorated parts. It is, however, necessary that the architect remains the authorising director. The direct submission of the painter, sculptor, and designer to the architect of the piece was one of the major features of the 1925 Exhibition. The fashionable decoration at the Exhibition has often been described as cubist. In truth, in 1925, authentic cubes or at least simple shapes, with flat surfaces were seen: those of reinforced concrete constructions and plywood pieces of furniture. But they did not owe Braque or Picasso anything. In order to understand the beauty of the bare masses, architects and cabinet-makers had not awaited the revelation of which some amateur critics had been the noisy heralds.

Joseph Hiriart, Georges Tribout and Georges Beau, La Maîtrise pavilion for Galeries Lafayette at the 1925 Paris Exhibition.

Cubism was hardly represented at the Exhibition, at least not in the paintings decorating the architectural compositions, except for two works placed in the hall of the embassy. One, a work of Fernand Léger, juxtaposed geometrical surfaces illuminated by pure colours spread out flat. The other, shimmering with colour, was entitled La Ville de Paris, or the City of Paris. Robert Delaunay had painted the Eiffel Tower and a lady, barely clothed, on the Pont de la Concorde. Whatever one might think of the outcome obtained in painting and sculpture by Picasso, Braque, and their disciples, it is certain that their formula contributed to develop the decorators’ taste for broken lines and abstracted decoration, far from living nature. Tired of curves and having exhausted the joys of a timid naturalism and of the stylisations of flora and fauna, which their precursors had abused, the decorators of 1925 took pleasure in a capricious geometry which had nothing to do with science.

The decoration on the monumental entrances of the place de la Concorde – in the low-reliefs intelligently composed by the Martel brothers for the pylons and the pedestal of the statue named L’Accueil, or Reception, – announced the union of art and industry. It could be found in the pavilion of Le Bon Marché (department store), of L’Intransigeant (daily newspaper), of Christofle (silverware), and Baccarat (crystal ware), and in a great number of kiosks. In response to the sensitivity of a generation who, in art, flee away from details and prefer the essence, this fashion resulting from Cubism remains a simple decorative convention. In theory, sculpture was only allowed at the Exhibition as long as it was a part of an architectural piece, hence the considerable number of low-reliefs. However, without taking into account the fountains, such as those of Max Blondat, Christofle, Marcel Loyau, and Naoum Aronson, statues and groups decorated the gardens, or the entrances to the buildings. This broad interpretation of the regulations made it possible to admire, close to the pavilion of the General Commissioner, a nude figure of a sovereign eurhythmy by Despiau, calm without being inert and, in addition, in an alcove of the Bernheim Jeune pavilion, a splendidly full-figured bronze nude by Maillot: both variations on an age-old theme, but nevertheless “modern” works due to the originality of vision.

Despite the subordination of sculptures in the round and low-reliefs to their architectural units, the Exhibition offered a rather exact image of the current state of sculpture in France. From sculpture which only stirs emotions through its lively profiles and its rhythmic outlines, to that which has the ambition to express ideas, and from the most traditional to the most paradoxical, every trend has its defenders. In the foreign sections, sculpture could not be represented in a complete state to qualify it for an overall judgement. We will focus later, within their respective sections, on capital works such as those of Mateo Hernandez of Spain, Henryk Kuna of Poland, Ivar Johnson and Carl Milles of Sweden, as well as Jean Stursa of the former Czechoslovakia.

In spite of the theories, sculpture is protected from any dangerous concern, because of the requirements of the profession which demands complete clarity of form. With fewer constraints, the painter can suggest more than he can express, can be more pleasing with a range of tones, and more charming with promises that may or may not be kept. Whilst sculpture has remained healthy and robust, painting underwent a significant crisis which was revealed by the Exhibition. This explains why the walls of the Court of Trades were not offered to the most original champions of young French painting. It is by paintings of restricted size exhibited in certain furniture units or in the pavilion Bernheim Jeune that their talent could be judged.

In the years leading up to the Exhibition, a renaissance of the fresco was witnessed. Paul Baudouin, disciple and friend of Symbolist painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, showed that frescos can survive as well under a wet sky as in a dry climate, if the painting materials are judiciously chosen and if the wall is preserved with saltpetre. The failure of many attempts made in France, in the first half of the 19th century, is due only to poor technique. It is known that painting with fresco, known from the Greeks and the Romans, and with so many masterpieces produced in Italy and in medieval France, consists of spreading colours diluted in water over a fresh plaster of faded lime and fine sand. Fixed on this mortar they become, whilst drying, as hard as the wall itself. The fresco, which requires prompt execution, is therefore a school of decision and, consequently, of reflection. The fresco painter has no time to either hesitate or get bogged down in the meticulousness of details. His composition must be finalised beforehand, then carried out on a large scale. It is also a school of simplicity, because lime admits only a restricted number of colours. Since the example of Paul Baudouin, the fresco already produced remarkable works: the splendid ensemble by Bourdelle at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the compositions of Marcel Lenoir at the seminar of Toulouse, heavy, systematic, but truly powerful, those of Caro Delvaille, those of Henry Marret, in particular in the Church of Saint-Louis de Vincennes. It seems that this technique must benefit from the appreciation of large flat surfaces, and it must offer reinforced concrete – a material of a rather poor appearance, or with asbestos cement (a substrate used by Marret), a suitable decoration for it. It was a significant part of the Exhibition, particularly in the French section.

Tiffany & Co., Desk clock.

Silver, jade, crystal, black onyx, and enamel, signed, height: 12.7 cm.

Jean Dunand, Lacquered panel with gold leaf, 1930.

Rapp & Rapp (architects), The Paramount Theater, auditorium, 1931. Aurora, Illinois.