Amy Kulper, architect and director of the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, tells how the visit to the exhibition ‘Art Déco. Il trionfo della modernità’ helps us to understand some of the decisive issues that triggered an epoch-making change. In addition to the aspects concerning industrialisation and new materials, the objects on display underline the perfect blend of values such as usefulness and beauty – known as ‘Beautility’ – and the emergence of an independent, androgynous female figure, making her mark outside the home to where she had been relegated until then. Geometric style becomes a way of interpreting the world, not merely what frames it.
Geometry is a major presence in all the aesthetic manifestations of Art Deco, recalling the many points of view introduced by Cubism and paving the way for abstraction.