Art Deco

No architect in the 1920s says they are building "Art Deco". The name comes from the great Paris exhibition of 1925, the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, but only catches on in the 1960s – the historian Bevis Hillier popularises it in 1968. At the time the style was called style moderne, or simply Moderne.

Its roots are in Paris and Vienna just before the First World War. Auguste Perret's Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, 1910–1913, is seen as the first great Art Deco building in Paris. Reinforced concrete makes freer forms possible, and façades are clad in ceramics, marble and metal. Ornament turns geometric: stepped crowns, sunbursts, zigzags and chevrons.

The great breakthrough comes in the United States. The Chrysler Building in New York is finished in 1930 and is the world's tallest building for eleven months – until the Empire State Building opens in 1931. In the 1930s the style softens into Streamline Moderne, with rounded corners and speed lines. And sometimes it becomes a rescue: when an earthquake destroys Napier in New Zealand in 1931, the centre is rebuilt in Art Deco, and still stands almost intact.

In Sweden the style never gets a name of its own. It merges into Swedish Grace, sometimes called "Swedish Art Deco".

Swedish Grace. Related and contemporary – but Swedish Grace is calmer, classically trained and sparing with ornament. Functionalism. Functionalism removes ornament altogether; Art Deco loves it.