gildedjuggernaut:
Information and Tourist Pavilion, Robert Mallet-Stevens
1925 Paris Exposition
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Robert Mallet-Stevens was a modernist interested in new forms and materials. His Pavilion for the Paris Exposition was seen as a great success by many who craved something more modern than the luxurious traditionalism of French Art Deco.
“When, in fact, the Paris fair opened, it became apparent that the modern spirit the French had demanded of the participants was not so revolutionary after all. The great majority of French displays bore a reassuring resemblance to familiar objects from the past, specifically those produced from the end of the eighteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. Unexpected, sometimes violent colors lent many of the exhibits an air of originality, as did occasional jagged decorative patterns derived from Cubism; but the forms to which they were applied…more often than not were based on pared-down Neoclassicism.
There was another side to the fair. Amid the welter of essentially conservative pavilions, there was a bare handful of structures designed in truly modern spirit….Robert Mallet-Stevens’s information and tourist pavilion was surmounted by an uncompromisingly geometric clock tower.” - American Modern, J. Stewart Johnson
