I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Merchandise Mart


This Art Deco behemoth was built by the retailer Marshall Field in 1930, and with over 4 million square feet of floor space, it was at the time the biggest building in the world.

But all those decorative flourishes just look so wrong to me. Art Deco architecture usually emphasizes the verticality of buildings, and applied to something so huge and so horizontal it just looks silly. Vertical stripes are not as slimming as we sometimes convince ourselves they are.


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