When style becomes an attitude and ornament a vision, we enter the world of Art Deco.
This aesthetic was born in an era of transformation, when the age of machines began to challenge traditional craftsmanship and society started to rethink beauty and functionality.
Art Deco is more than mere decoration – it is an attempt to shape modern life: technical, refined, and elegant. Emerging around 1915, it replaced Art Nouveau and became the defining visual language between the two World Wars. Its essence lies in the reconciliation of progress and sensibility, of industrial production and artistic dignity.
The cradle of Art Deco lies in Paris. In 1925, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes opened there—a monumental exhibition stretching between Les Invalides, the Petit Palais, and the Grand Palais, which became the symbol of a new movement. Fifteen thousand artists, designers, and architects presented their work, and more than fifteen million visitors flocked to the exhibition grounds over the course of seven months. It was the manifesto of a new aesthetic—one that did not fear the industrial age, but celebrated it.
The term Art Deco, derived from Arts Décoratifs, was not coined until the 1960s, when this epoch began to be appreciated in retrospect. At first, many regarded it as a style without dogma—a sensibility that shaped geometry, proportion, and material into a harmonious whole. It absorbed influences from Cubism, Futurism, De Stijl, and the Bauhaus, yet infused them with a sensuality that transcended pure function. While Le Corbusier dismissed the movement for its decorative tendencies, its advocates saw in it an effort to reconcile beauty with technology.
In this synthesis, a new design language emerged—a language of symmetry, reduction, and disciplined elegance that expressed itself on every level of life.
Art Nouveau, which shaped the visual culture before the First World War, was defined by artisanal refinement and organic ornamentation. Its flowing lines and nature-inspired motifs reflected an elitist understanding of art that placed the unique object above all else. Art Deco, by contrast, saw itself as both a counter-movement and a continuation. It sought clarity, simplification, and geometric order. The fluid line gave way to the precise edge; the floral motif to the ornament of the machine.
Its goal was to unite art with the industrial age—to make beauty accessible without diminishing it. In this sense, Art Deco became the egalitarian style of modernity: aesthetically sophisticated but not elitist, industrially producible yet imbued with artistic spirit. This attitude manifested itself across all disciplines—from furniture and everyday objects to jewelry, fashion, and architecture.
In architecture, Art Deco achieved its most monumental expression. The Chrysler Building in New York, completed in 1930, with its tiered stainless-steel crown and stylized sunburst motifs, became the very emblem of modernist euphoria. The Empire State Building, finished a year later, embodies the vertical ambition and technical audacity of an era determined to conquer the sky.
In Europe, the style appeared more refined and restrained. The Palais de Tokyo in Paris unites classical monumentality with geometric rigor, while the Hoover Building in London—an industrial structure adorned with colorful reliefs and stylized ornamentation—demonstrates that even the architecture of labor can attain dignity through design. Here, the essence of Art Deco reveals itself in its purest form: ornament as a structural principle, not as embellishment.
Art Deco permeated the domestic sphere down to the finest line. Furniture, fabrics, carpets, wallpapers, and lighting formed a harmonious ensemble in which every detail communicated with the whole. Fan motifs, stepped patterns, zigzags, and abstracted natural forms defined the visual language. Materials such as lacquered wood, glass, chrome, and stainless steel lent the objects a radiance that was neither ostentatious nor cold, but rather a controlled form of luxury.
The interior became a stage for modern elegance. It was no longer about mere utility, but about a new sensuality of function. Form followed function—and refined it.
Few objects embody the essence of Art Deco as clearly as the luminaire. It unites technology and atmosphere, mechanics and magic. Within it, the idea of movement is distilled—light as an architectural element that shapes space and creates mood.
With its lighting models AD 30, AD 32, and AD 34, TECNOLUMEN continues this tradition with conviction. These designs are not replicas, but timeless interpretations of an era that elevated precision, proportion, and clarity to guiding principles.
Each luminaire captures the very core of Art Deco—the interplay between precision and sensuality, between structure and atmosphere. In them, the promise of that age becomes tangible: that progress can be not only useful, but beautiful.
The spirit of Art Deco reveals itself in both the grand and the minute—in the soaring architecture of skyscrapers as much as in the handle of a door. The fittings Art Deco 1929 and Art Deco 1930 by TECNOLINE, the fittings line of TECNOLUMEN, carry this principle forward with uncompromising consistency.
With the Great Depression of 1929, the style began to change. The first, luxurious phase gave way to a more sober expression that reflected the new realities. In the United States, the so-called Streamline Moderne emerged—a further development of Art Deco that almost entirely abandoned ornamentation. Long horizontal lines, rounded edges, and aerodynamic forms replaced the vertical emphasis. Glass, concrete, and chrome took the place of exotic woods and ivory. Everything became lighter, smoother, and more technical. This aesthetic embodied the hope for efficiency and motion—for a future devoted to speed.
Even in this phase, the core idea of Art Deco remained intact: the pursuit of beauty within functionality, and the search for harmony between human, machine, and material.
From Paris and New York, Art Deco spread to the great metropolises of the world. In Havana, entire neighborhoods arose in the new style; in London, it shaped the architecture of the Underground; in Shanghai, monumental buildings reflected a cosmopolitan interpretation of the movement; and in Sydney and Mumbai, it was adapted with local flair. Everywhere, Art Deco fused regional traditions with modern design language. It became the first truly global design style of the modern age—a shared code of progress, urbanity, and elegance.
Cinema discovered the language of Art Deco early on. Gotham City, the home of Batman, echoes in its dark monumentality the vertical lines and tiered façades of the 1930s. The interplay of light and shadow, glass and steel, creates an atmosphere suspended between fascination and menace.
In Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby, Art Deco becomes the very embodiment of the Golden Age—a delirium of brilliance, excess, and formal perfection. Both visions reveal how versatile the style remains: at times cool and urban, at others shimmering and opulent, yet always expressive.
During the Second World War, the style lost its significance. The harsh realities of the time and the scarcity of materials pushed its glamour into the background. Yet from the 1960s onward, Art Deco experienced a revival. Historians, designers, and collectors began to recognize in it the first truly modern aesthetic—rational yet sensual, handcrafted yet industrial, European yet global. A term that had once been used only in passing came to stand for an attitude that continues to resonate to this day.
Art Deco is not a nostalgic style, but a way of thinking. It seeks beauty in progress and order in abundance; it unites the coolness of the machine with the warmth of form. In an age that wavers between minimalism and excess, Art Deco offers a balance of discipline and splendor, of structure and sensuality.
In the luminaires of TECNOLUMEN, in the fittings of TECNOLINE, in the architecture of New York, and on the screens of Gatsby and Gotham, this attitude lives on. Art Deco endures because it reminds us that form does not merely follow—it leads. And that true elegance lies in precision.
