Modernity In America

Steamlining practically prevailed America in the years from 1930's till the 1950's. It developed from the Art Deco Style, which it was described as 'Art Deco on the move'. The designs during this era were initially functional.

Streamline Principle: To reduce the amount of resistance it encounters when it travels through a medium like air or water.

Norman Bel Geddes - 1932

This movement started by producing forms of transportation that could operate with the least air resistance possible with the shape of a bullet. The concept was that because of the bullet shape it would 'look' fast. 

The first streamlined car that was produced during this period which was by an engineer Carl Breer, was known as the 'Airflow' in 1934. 

The form of the product became more appealing and eye-catching than the functionality of speed and power and it became a decorative style known for its 'flash-and-gleam' beauty as Sheldon and Martha Chaney put it in their book: Art and the Machine

They wrote:

"Streamlining . . . As an aesthetic style mark, and a symbol of twentieth-century machine-age speed, precision, and efficiency, it has been borrowed from the airplane and made to compel the eye anew, with the same flash-and-gleam beauty re-embodied in all travel and transportation machines intended for fast-going."

Sheldon and Martha Chaney, Art and the Machine (1936).

Characteristics include flowing and organic curves. 

1930's designed streamlined cars

1938 Mercury Eight and 1939 Studebaker Commander

1936 Nash Lafayette 

1940's designed streamlined cars:

1947 Packard Custom Super Clipper

Packard 180 Convertible Victoria

1940 Lincoln Continental

Streamlining also influenced appliance and furniture design:

Sterling streamline Iron - 1930-40, Eric Brill

Walter Dorwin Teague - Executive Desk Lamp - 1939

Kem Weber - Lounge Chair - 1934

References:

- ZipFWorks Inc, 2014, Streamlined Design - Modernity in America [ONLINE] Available at: http://architecture.knoji.com/streamlined-design-modernity-in-america/ [Accessed at 21 January 2014]

- Dieselpunk, 2009, The Wind in your Hair - Streamlining [ONLINE] Available at http://flyingfortress.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/the-wind-in-your-hair-streamlining/ [Accessed 21 January 2014]