Streamlining was a style that dominated American design from the 1930s to the 1950s. Streamlining grew out of the Art Deco style, but it was simplified and infused with a sense of dynamism that gave it huge commercial appeal. In fact, Streamlining has been described as ‘Art Deco on the move.’ Streamlining fuelled the consumer revolution of the 1950s and became the visual language of American modernity. The style was as much about economics as aesthetics. The industrial design profession emerged at this time and used streamline design to serve American corporate capitalism.
Streamlining was a style that dominated American design from the 1930s to the 1950s. Streamlining grew out of the Art Deco style, but it was simplified and infused with a sense of dynamism that gave it huge commercial appeal. In fact, Streamlining has been described as ‘Art Deco on the move.’ Streamlining fuelled the consumer revolution of the 1950s and became the visual language of American modernity. The style was as much about economics as aesthetics. The industrial design profession emerged at this time and used streamline design to serve American corporate capitalism.
Streamlining is the shaping of an object to reduce the amount of resistance it encounters when it travels through a medium like air or water. It occurs in nature: aquatic animals like dolphins are naturally adapted to travel quickly through water. This is a diagram illustrating the principle of streamlining. It was drawn by the American industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes and published in his book Horizons (1932). The teardrop shape is the optimum form for reducing air resistance because it allows air to slip over it. This inspired engineers to produce airplanes and cars that were sleek in form and kept air resistance to a.The Chrysler Corporation was a pioneer in the design of aerodynamic cars. The first commercially-produced streamlined car was the Chrysler 'Airflow' (1934), so named because it was designed with this prototypical streamlined form, allowing air to pass over it. The form was a key selling point. The Chrysler Airflow was designed by Carl Breer, who was an engineer rather than a designer. So streamlining was initially functional – it made a moving object more efficient.However, some designers recognised that the aerodynamic form was appealing in its own right; it had connotations of speed and power. The commercial value of this new imagery was enormous. Streamlining became a decorative style in its own right. In their book Art and the Machine, Sheldon and Martha Chaney 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).
Streamlining was applied to virtually all forms of design, even static pieces. Electrical products began to display the same progressive imagery found in aeroplanes and cars. This is an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, designed by the Lurelle Guild (1937). This is an inanimate object, but it still adopts the kinetic style with chrome trim and speed-lines. The piece is made from aluminium and chrome-plated steel, which presents it as a piece of precision engineering. This type of streamlining has no functional purpose; it’s being used purely as a decorative style.