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163-401: The building is a fine example of art deco architecture and design, and it has many interesting internal features such as the banking hall, assembly room, directors' board room; external features include a dramatic ziggurat structure, prismoid (triangular) windows, and one of the longest carved stone friezes in the world. It has been said that it provides evidence of the colonial attitudes of

326-526: A prison where people were isolated, banished, and exiled for nearly 400 years. It was also used as a leper colony, a post office, a grazing ground, a mental hospital, and an outpost. The Cape Peninsula is a rocky and mountainous peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean at the south-western extremity of the continent. At its tip is Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope . The peninsula forms

489-521: A severe water shortage from 2015 to 2018. According to Oxfam , "in the face of an imminent water shortage, the city of Cape Town in South Africa successfully reduced its water use by more than half in three years, cutting it from 1.2bn litres per day in February 2015 to 516m litres per day in 2018." In 2021 Cape Town also experienced a violent turf war between rival taxi firms which led to

652-842: A 20th-century adaptation of a classical subject. Other important works for Rockefeller Center were made by Lee Lawrie , including the sculptural façade and the Atlas statue . During the Great Depression in the United States, many sculptors were commissioned to make works for the decoration of federal government buildings, with funds provided by the WPA, or Works Progress Administration . They included sculptor Sidney Biehler Waugh, who created stylized and idealized images of workers and their tasks for federal government office buildings. In San Francisco, Ralph Stackpole provided sculpture for

815-618: A broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major academic book on it, Art Deco of the 20s and 30s . He noted that the term was already being used by art dealers, and cites The Times (2 November 1966) and an essay named Les Arts Déco in Elle magazine (November 1967) as examples. In 1971, he organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts , which he details in his book The World of Art Deco . In its time, Art Deco

978-540: A departure from) the undulating Art Nouveau style of Hector Guimard , so popular in Paris a few years earlier. Grasset stressed the principle that various simple geometric shapes like triangles and squares are the basis of all compositional arrangements. The reinforced-concrete buildings of Auguste Perret and Henri Sauvage, and particularly the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées , offered a new form of construction and decoration which

1141-623: A few other towns. Industry and commerce is largely in service of the area. After the Cape Peninsula, Helderberg is the next most mountainous part of Greater Cape Town, bordered to the north and east by the highest peaks in the region along the watershed of the Helderberg and Hottentots Holland Mountains, which are part of the Cape Fold Belt with Cape Supergroup strata on a basement of Tygerberg Formation rocks intruded by part of

1304-699: A flood of immigration into South Africa. In 1895 the city's first public power station, the Graaff Electric Lighting Works , was opened. Conflicts between the Boer republics in the interior and the British colonial government resulted in the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. Britain's victory in this war led to the formation of a united South Africa. From 1891 to 1901, the city's population more than doubled from 67,000 to 171,000. As

1467-482: A floral chair with a parrot design for the hunting lodge of art collector Jacques Doucet . The furniture designers Louis Süe and André Mare made their first appearance at the 1912 exhibit, under the name of the Atelier français , combining polychromatic fabrics with exotic and expensive materials, including ebony and ivory. After World War I, they became one of the most prominent French interior design firms, producing

1630-537: A large number of larger more modern buildings have been built since (see the views from and of the building, shown further down this page). Some details from the panels: In 2016 the Assembly room was purchased for private use, and with the adjoining sections of the building it is being re-finished as private accommodation. On the fourth level, at the front of the building, is the Directors' Board Room. As well as

1793-539: A major gap at the Fish Hoek–Noordhoek valley. In the south much of the area is a low sandstone plateau with sand dunes. Maximum altitude is 1113 m on Table Mountain. The Cape Flats (Afrikaans: Kaapse Vlakte) is a flat, low-lying, sandy area, area to the east the Cape Peninsula, and west of the Helderberg much of which was wetland and dunes within recent history. To the north are the Tygerberg Hills and

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1956-468: A modernist look. At its birth between 1910 and 1914, Art Deco was an explosion of colours, featuring bright and often clashing hues, frequently in floral designs, presented in furniture upholstery , carpets, screens, wallpaper and fabrics. Many colourful works, including chairs and a table by Maurice Dufrêne and a bright Gobelin carpet by Paul Follot were presented at the 1912 Salon des artistes décorateurs . In 1912–1913 designer Adrien Karbowsky made

2119-448: A number of satellite towns, suburbs and rural areas such as Atlantis , Bellville , Blouberg , Brackenfell , Durbanville , Goodwood , Gordon's Bay , Hout Bay , Khayelitsha , Kraaifontein , Kuilsrivier , Macassar , Melkbosstrand , Milnerton , Muizenberg , Noordhoek , Parow , Philadelphia , Simon's Town , Somerset West , and Strand among others. The Cape Peninsula is 52 km (30 mi) long from Mouille Point in

2282-463: A painting by Jean Dupas . The interior design followed the same principles of symmetry and geometric forms which set it apart from Art Nouveau, and bright colours, fine craftsmanship rare and expensive materials which set it apart from the strict functionality of the Modernist style. While most of the pavilions were lavishly decorated and filled with hand-made luxury furniture, two pavilions, those of

2445-399: A part in the resurgence of decorative arts, as French designers felt challenged by the increasing exports of less expensive German furnishings. In 1911, SAD proposed a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912. No copies of old styles would be permitted, only modern works. The exhibit was postponed until 1914; and then, because of the war, until 1925, when it gave its name to

2608-602: A style which flourished in Europe between 1895 and 1900, and coexisted with the Beaux-Arts and neoclassical that were predominant in European and American architecture. In 1905 Eugène Grasset wrote and published Méthode de Composition Ornementale, Éléments Rectilignes, in which he systematically explored the decorative (ornamental) aspects of geometric elements, forms, motifs and their variations, in contrast with (and as

2771-675: Is Tamara de Lempicka . Born in Poland, she emigrated to Paris after the Russian Revolution . She studied under Maurice Denis and André Lhote , and borrowed many elements from their styles. She painted portraits in a realistic, dynamic and colourful Art Deco style. In the 1930s, a dramatic new form of Art Deco painting appeared in the United States. During the Great Depression, the Federal Art Project of

2934-613: Is a style of visual arts, architecture , and product design , that first appeared in Paris in the 1910s (just before World War I ), and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s to early 1930s. Through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including how people look (clothing, fashion, and jewelry), Art Deco has influenced bridges, buildings (from skyscrapers to cinemas), ships, ocean liners , trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects including radios and vacuum cleaners. Art Deco got its name after

3097-467: Is clearly identified on the exterior as the "Mutual Building" (or "Mutual Gebou" in Afrikaans) it is often familiarly referred to as "The Old Mutual Building". Here, in the body of this article, it will be referred to as the "Mutual Building", thereby acknowledging the nomenclature on the exterior of the building itself. The figure here (adapted from www.skycrapers.com) compares the building with some of

3260-408: Is now an international business with offices all over the world, and its portfolio of financial services continues to evolve to meet market needs. It is now some years since the business "de-mutualised" in order to issue shares and fund its operations using conventional investment markets. In the 1930s it became clear that a new headquarters building was needed and very ambitious targets were set for

3423-433: Is personally credited with most of the detailed work but Ivan Mitford-Barberton was also involved with some internal details as well as with the external granite decorations. It is pleasing that the principal areas of the building have been so little changed over the years, especially the entrance, the banking hall, the assembly room, the directors' room, the atrium, and the windows. Even the original door handles (including

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3586-755: Is the Christ the Redeemer by the French sculptor Paul Landowski , completed between 1922 and 1931, located on a mountain top overlooking Rio de Janeiro , Brazil. Many early Art Deco sculptures were small, designed to decorate salons. One genre of this sculpture was called the Chryselephantine statuette, named for a style of ancient Greek temple statues made of gold and ivory. They were sometimes made of bronze, or sometimes with much more lavish materials, such as ivory, onyx , alabaster, and gold leaf. One of

3749-719: Is the legislative capital of South Africa . It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa . It is the country's second-largest city, after Johannesburg , and the largest in the Western Cape . The city is part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality . The city is known for its harbour , its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region , and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point . In 2014, Cape Town

3912-532: Is the valley of the Steenbras River, in which the Steenbras Dam was built as a water supply for Cape Town. The dam has been supplemented by several other dams around the western Cape, some of them considerably larger. This is almost entirely a conservation area, of high biodiversity. Bellville , Brackenfell , Durbanville , Kraaifontein , Goodwood and Parow are a few of the towns that make up

4075-541: The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 . The city became the capital of the newly formed Cape Colony , whose territory expanded very substantially through the 1800s, partially as a result of numerous wars with the amaXhosa on the colony's eastern frontier. In 1833 slavery was abolished in the colony freeing over 5500 slaves in the city, almost a third of the city's population at the time. The Convict Crisis of 1849, marked by substantial civil upheaval, bolstered

4238-766: The Battle of Salt River , the Portuguese admiral Francisco de Almeida and sixty-four of his men were killed and his party was defeated by the "Goringhaiqua" in Dutch approximate spelling) using cattle that were specially trained to respond to whistles and shouts. The Gorinaiqua were one of the Khoikhoi clans who inhabited the area. In the late 16th century French, Danish, Dutch and English, but mainly Portuguese, ships regularly continued to stop over in Table Bay en route to

4401-718: The Cape Supergroup , of which parts of the Graafwater and Peninsula Formations remain, were uplifted between 280 and 21S million years ago, and were largely eroded away during the Mesozoic. The region was geologically stable during the Tertiary, which has led to slow denudation of the durable sandstones. Erosion rate and drainage has been influenced by fault lines and fractures, leaving remnant steep-sided massifs like Table Mountain surrounded by flatter slopes of deposits of

4564-491: The Empire State Building , Chrysler Building , and other buildings from the 1920s and 1930s are monuments to the style. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression , Art Deco gradually became more subdued. A sleeker form of the style, called Streamline Moderne , appeared in the 1930s, featuring curving forms and smooth, polished surfaces. Art Deco was a truly international style, but its dominance ended with

4727-704: The Far East . Jan van Riebeeck 's arrival on 6 April 1652 established the VOC Cape Colony , the first permanent European settlement in South Africa. Cape Town outgrew its original purpose as the first European outpost at the Castle of Good Hope , becoming the economic and cultural hub of the Cape Colony . Until the Witwatersrand Gold Rush and the development of Johannesburg, Cape Town was

4890-500: The Fort de Goede Hoop (later replaced by the Castle of Good Hope ). The settlement grew slowly during this period, as it was hard to find adequate labour. This labour shortage prompted the local authorities to import enslaved people from Indonesia and Madagascar . Many of these people are ancestors of modern-day Cape Coloured and Cape Malay communities. Under Van Riebeeck and his successors, as VOC commanders and later governors at

5053-528: The Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Parallel with these Art Deco sculptors, more avant-garde and abstract modernist sculptors were at work in Paris and New York City. The most prominent were Constantin Brâncuși , Joseph Csaky , Alexander Archipenko , Henri Laurens , Jacques Lipchitz , Gustave Miklos , Jean Lambert-Rucki , Jan et Joël Martel , Chana Orloff and Pablo Gargallo . The Art Deco style appeared early in

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5216-590: The Northern Suburbs of Cape Town. In current popular culture these areas are often referred to as being beyond the " boerewors curtain," a play on the term " iron curtain ." UNESCO declared Robben Island in the Western Cape a World Heritage Site in 1999. Robben Island is located in Table Bay, some 6 km (3.7 mi) west of Bloubergstrand, a coastal suburb north of Cape Town, and stands some 30m above sea level. Robben Island has been used as

5379-612: The Southern Suburbs , close to the mountains, rainfall is significantly higher and averages closer to 1,000 mm (39.4 in). Summer, which lasts from December to March, is warm and dry with an average maximum of 26 °C (79 °F) and minimum of 16 °C (61 °F). The region can get uncomfortably hot when the Berg Wind , meaning "mountain wind", blows from the Karoo interior. Spring and summer generally feature

5542-635: The Table Mountain group sandstones that were deposited on the eroded surface of the granite and Malmesbury series basement about 450 million years ago. The sand, silt and mud deposits were lithified by pressure and then folded during the Cape Orogeny to form the Cape Fold Belt , which extends in an arc along the western and southern coasts. The present landscape is due to prolonged erosion having carved out deep valleys, removing parts of

5705-496: The Works Progress Administration was created to give work to unemployed artists. Many were given the task of decorating government buildings, hospitals and schools. There was no specific Art Deco style used in the murals; artists engaged to paint murals in government buildings came from many different schools, from American regionalism to social realism ; they included Reginald Marsh , Rockwell Kent and

5868-430: The École royale gratuite de dessin (Royal Free School of Design), founded in 1766 under King Louis XVI to train artists and artisans in crafts relating to the fine arts, was renamed the École nationale des arts décoratifs ( National School of Decorative Arts). It took its present name, ENSAD ( École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs ), in 1920.. The actual term art déco did not appear in print until 1966, in

6031-901: The 1912 Salon d'Automne was entrusted to the department store Printemps , and that year it created its own workshop, Primavera . By 1920 Primavera employed more than 300 artists, whose styles ranged from updated versions of Louis XIV , Louis XVI , and especially Louis Philippe furniture made by Louis Süe and the Primavera workshop, to more modern forms from the workshop of the Au Louvre department store. Other designers, including Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Paul Follot, refused to use mass production, insisting that each piece be made individually. The early Art Deco style featured luxurious and exotic materials such as ebony , ivory and silk, very bright colours and stylized motifs , particularly baskets and bouquets of flowers of all colours, giving

6194-424: The 1920s, the look changed; the fashions stressed were more casual, sportive and daring, with the woman models usually smoking cigarettes. American fashion magazines such as Vogue , Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar quickly picked up the new style and popularized it in the United States. It also influenced the work of American book illustrators such as Rockwell Kent. In Germany, the most famous poster artist of

6357-556: The 1920s. The art movement known as Cubism appeared in France between 1907 and 1912, influencing the development of Art Deco. In Art Deco Complete: The Definitive Guide to the Decorative Arts of the 1920s and 1930s Alastair Duncan writes "Cubism, in some bastardized form or other, became the lingua franca of the era's decorative artists." The Cubists, themselves under the influence of Paul Cézanne , were interested in

6520-415: The 1920s. Art Deco's development of Cubism's selective geometry into a wider array of shapes carried Cubism as a pictorial taxonomy to a much broader audience and wider appeal. (Richard Harrison Martin, Metropolitan Museum of Art) Art Deco was not a single style, but a collection of different and sometimes contradictory styles. In architecture, Art Deco was the successor to (and reaction against) Art Nouveau,

6683-969: The 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes ( International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts ) held in Paris . Art Deco has its origins in bold geometric forms of the Vienna Secession and Cubism . From its outset, it was influenced by the bright colors of Fauvism and of the Ballets Russes , and the exoticized styles of art from China , Japan , India , Persia , ancient Egypt , and Maya . During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance and faith in social and technological progress. The movement featured rare and expensive materials, such as ebony and ivory, and exquisite craftsmanship. It also introduced new materials such as chrome plating , stainless steel and plastic. In New York,

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6846-579: The 19th century came to an end, the economic and political dominance of Cape Town in the Southern Africa region during the 19th century started to give way to the dominance of Johannesburg and Pretoria in the 20th century. In 1910, Britain established the Union of South Africa , which unified the Cape Colony with the two defeated Boer Republics and the British colony of Natal . Cape Town became

7009-528: The 19th century were considered simply artisans. The term arts décoratifs had been invented in 1875 , giving the designers of furniture, textiles, and other decoration official status. The Société des artistes décorateurs (Society of Decorative Artists), or SAD, was founded in 1901, and decorative artists were given the same rights of authorship as painters and sculptors. A similar movement developed in Italy. The first international exhibition devoted entirely to

7172-653: The Art Deco aesthetic, when transposed from the canvas onto a textile material or wallpaper. Sonia Delaunay conceives her dress models in an abstract and geometric style, "as live paintings or sculptures of living forms". Cubist-like designs are created by Louis Barrilet in the stained-glass windows of the American bar at the Atrium Casino in Dax (1926), but also including names of fashionable cocktails. In architecture,

7335-498: The Atlantic Ocean with significant precipitation and strong north-westerly winds. Winter months in the city average a maximum of 18 °C (64 °F) and minimum of 8.5 °C (47 °F). Winters are snow and frost free, except on Table Mountain and on other mountain peaks, where light accumulation of snow and frost can sometimes occur. Total annual rainfall in the city averages 515 mm (20.3 in) although in

7498-549: The Cape of Good Hope" in Cape Town . Over the next 100 years the business was to evolve significantly, changing its name in 1885 to the "South Africa Mutual Life Assurance Society", but becoming familiarly known simply as "The Old Mutual", so as to distinguish it from newer businesses of the same kind. The company employed women as early as 1901, expanded into Namibia in 1920 and into Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia ) in 1927. Old Mutual

7661-579: The Cape was considered a " Coloured labour preference area", to the exclusion of " Bantus ", i.e. Black Africans. The implementation of this policy was widely opposed by trade unions, civil society and opposition parties. It is notable that this policy was not advocated for by any Coloured political group, and its implementation was a unilateral decision by the apartheid government. During the student-led Soweto Uprising of June 1976, school students from Langa , Gugulethu and Nyanga in Cape Town reacted to

7824-471: The Cape, a wide range of agricultural plants were introduced to the Cape. Some of these, including grapes, cereals, ground nuts, potatoes, apples and citrus, had a large and lasting influence on the societies and economies of the region. With the Dutch Republic being transformed into Revolutionary France 's vassal Batavian Republic , Great Britain moved to take control of Dutch colonies, including

7987-523: The Crossroads (1933) for 30 Rockefeller Plaza featured an unauthorized portrait of Lenin . When Rivera refused to remove Lenin, the painting was destroyed and a new mural was painted by the Spanish artist Josep Maria Sert . Sculpture was a very common and integral feature of Art Deco architecture. In France, allegorical bas-reliefs representing dance and music by Antoine Bourdelle decorated

8150-605: The Indies. They traded tobacco, copper, and iron with the Khoikhoi clans of the region in exchange for fresh meat and other essential travelling provisions. In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck and other employees of the United East India Company ( Dutch : Verenigde Oost-indische Compagnie , VOC) were sent to the Cape Colony to establish a way-station for ships travelling to the Dutch East Indies , and

8313-523: The Mexican painter Diego Rivera . The murals were Art Deco because they were all decorative and related to the activities in the building or city where they were painted: Reginald Marsh and Rockwell Kent both decorated U.S. postal buildings, and showed postal employees at work while Diego Rivera depicted automobile factory workers for the Detroit Institute of Arts . Diego Rivera's mural Man at

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8476-480: The Old Mutual "logo") and the original banisters (on the staircases) are all still intact, and the atrium is largely unchanged although it is now protected from the weather by a translucent roof. The original light fittings in the "public" areas are largely still intact, and in most parts of the building there are beautiful block-wood (parquet) floors. Here is a selection of interior design details that exemplify

8639-572: The Soviet Union and Pavilion de L'Esprit Nouveau , built by the magazine of that name run by Le Corbusier, were built in an austere style with plain white walls and no decoration; they were among the earliest examples of modernist architecture . In 1925, two different competing schools coexisted within Art Deco: the traditionalists, who had founded the Society of Decorative Artists; included

8802-445: The Soviet Union, Konstantin Melnikov ; the Irish designer Eileen Gray; the French designer Sonia Delaunay; and the jewellers Georges Fouquet and Jean Puiforcat . They fiercely attacked the traditional Art Deco style, which they said was created only for the wealthy, and insisted that well-constructed buildings should be available to everyone, and that form should follow function. The beauty of an object or building resided in whether it

8965-419: The Stellenbosch district. The Helderberg area of Greater Cape Town, previously known as the "Hottentots-Holland" area, is mostly residential, but also a wine-producing area east of the Cape Flats, west of the Hottentots Holland mountain range and south of the Helderberg mountain, from which it gets its current name. The Helderberg consists of the previous municipalities of Somerset West, Strand, Gordons Bay and

9128-407: The Stellenbosch granite pluton. The region includes the entire catchment of the Lourens and Sir Lowry's rivers, separated by the Schapenberg hill, and a small part of the catchment of the Eerste River to the west. The Helderberg is ecologically highly diverse, rivaling the Cape Peninsula, and has its own endemic ecoregions and several conservation areas. To the east of the Hottentots Holland mountains

9291-434: The United States during the Great Depression. The Federal Art Project hired American artists to create posters to promote tourism and cultural events. The architectural style of Art Deco made its debut in Paris in 1903–04, with the construction of two apartment buildings in Paris, one by Auguste Perret on rue Benjamin Franklin and the other on rue Trétaigne by Henri Sauvage. The two young architects used reinforced concrete for

9454-403: The United States in 1929, and reached Europe shortly afterwards, greatly reduced the number of wealthy clients who could pay for the furnishings and art objects. In the Depression economic climate, few companies were ready to build new skyscrapers. Even the Ruhlmann firm resorted to producing pieces of furniture in series, rather than individual hand-made items. The last buildings built in Paris in

9617-402: The United States, where, during the World War, he designed posters to encourage war production. The designer Charles Gesmar became famous making posters for the singer Mistinguett and for Air France . Among the best-known French Art Deco poster designers was Cassandre , who made the celebrated poster of the ocean liner SS Normandie in 1935. In the 1930s a new genre of posters appeared in

9780-402: The Western Cape province. The official boundaries of the city proper extend between the City Bowl and the Atlantic Seaboard to the east and the Southern Suburbs to the south. The City of Cape Town , the metropolitan municipality that takes its name from the city covers the Greater Cape Town metropolitan area , known as the Cape Metropole, extending beyond the city proper itself to include

9943-408: The area, arrived in 1488 and named it "Cape of Storms" ( Cabo das Tormentas ). It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as " Cape of Good Hope " ( Cabo da Boa Esperança ) because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to the Indian subcontinent and East Indies . In 1497, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama recorded a sighting of the Cape of Good Hope. In 1510, at

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10106-416: The art deco theme that prevails elsewhere in the building, and again we see that the glass over the doors (at the far end in the photograph below) are etched with the iconic ziggurat form that is taken by the whole building. The two service counters that can be seen in the banking hall look identical, but only the one on the right is original—the one on the left is a later, somewhat inferior, copy. Between

10269-481: The balcony of Cape Town City Hall , hours after being released on 11 February 1990. His speech heralded the beginning of a new era for the country. The first democratic election , was held four years later, on 27 April 1994. Nobel Square in the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront features statues of South Africa's four Nobel Peace Prize winners: Albert Luthuli , Desmond Tutu , F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela . Cape Town has undergone significant changes in

10432-475: The beginning of World War II and the rise of the strictly functional and unadorned styles of modern architecture and the International Style of architecture that followed. Art Deco took its name, short for Arts Décoratifs , from the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts held in Paris in 1925, though the diverse styles that characterised it had already appeared in Paris and Brussels before World War I . Arts décoratifs

10595-424: The best governed province and city in the country. Of South Africa's 257 municipalities, only 38 received a clean financial audit in 2022 from the Auditor-General . Of those, 21 were in the Western Cape. The city's economy has diversified, with growth in sectors such as finance, real estate, and tourism. The establishment of the City Centre Improvement District (CCID) has been particularly successful in revitalizing

10758-411: The best known feature of the building (in artistic circles at least) is the Assembly Room, sometimes referred to as the "Fresco Room"; Freschi indicates that this was originally intended as a facility for policy holders. Here there are striking frescoes depicting some of the history of the nation of South Africa, undertaken by Le Roux Smith Le Roux two years after the completion of the building. Le Roux

10921-427: The best-known Art Deco salon sculptors was the Romanian-born Demétre Chiparus , who produced colourful small sculptures of dancers. Other notable salon sculptors included Ferdinand Preiss , Josef Lorenzl , Alexander Kelety, Dorothea Charol and Gustav Schmidtcassel. Another important American sculptor in the studio format was Harriet Whitney Frishmuth , who had studied with Auguste Rodin in Paris. Pierre Le Paguays

11084-404: The board room there are two side rooms, one of which was a sitting room for Directors. In the board room there is a continuous carved stinkwood frieze above the dado rail that incorporates animal and floral motifs (14 different species of birds and animals are represented). Ivan Mitford-Barberton is credited with this carving and it is probably the last work that he did in the building. Above

11247-458: The building as the sun traverses the sky. Water-cooled air conditioning was another innovative feature of the original building, that avoided the need for extensive natural ventilation and allowed more freedom for the design of the windows and granite spaces between; the same water-cooled air conditioning design is in use today. Art deco Art Deco , short for the French Arts décoratifs ( lit.   ' Decorative Arts ' ),

11410-413: The building or room. The themes were usually selected by the patrons, not the artist. Abstract sculpture for decoration was extremely rare. In the United States, the most prominent Art Deco sculptor for public art was Paul Manship , who updated classical and mythological subjects and themes in an Art Deco style. His most famous work was the statue of Prometheus at Rockefeller Center in New York City,

11573-425: The building: it was to be the tallest building in South Africa (possibly in the whole continent of Africa, with the exception of the pyramids in Egypt), it was to have the fastest lifts, it was to have the largest windows. At the same time it was to epitomise the values of the business: "Strength, Security and Confidence in the Future"; this demanded a combination of traditional and contemporary design. Although it

11736-539: The buildings that inspired it, for example the Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles. They are also functional, because they allow light to enter the building more effectively than would otherwise be the case (using the reflective properties of the inside face of the glass), and by opening and closing blinds on the one side or the other it is possible on sunny days to manage the heat entering

11899-507: The carved frieze is a mural designed and executed by Joyce Ord-Brown using stain on pale sycamore panelling. It represents Cape Town as the "Tavern of the Seas" in a light hearted way. The curtains are notable, being hand woven in a workshop in Eswatini (also known as Swaziland ), by Coral Stephens Handweaving , a company established in the 1940s. The selections below show some portions of

12062-568: The city center, bringing businesses and people back into the area. This initiative has transformed public spaces such as Greenmarket Square , Company's Garden , and St George's Mall, attracting both locals and tourists. In 2014, Cape Town was named World Design Capital of the Year. Cape Town was voted the best tourist destination in Africa at the 2023 World Travel Awards in Dubai and continues to be

12225-509: The city centre. The legacy of Apartheid means Cape Town remains one of the most racially segregated cities in South Africa. Many Black South Africans continue to live in informal settlements with limited access to basic services such as healthcare, education, and sanitation. The unemployment rate remains high at 23% (though nearly 10 points lower than the nationwide average), particularly among historically disadvantaged groups, and economic opportunities are unevenly distributed. Cape Town faced

12388-493: The clear contrast between horizontal and vertical volumes, specific both to Russian Constructivism and the Frank Lloyd Wright - Willem Marinus Dudok line, becomes a common device in articulating Art Deco façades, from individual homes and tenement buildings to cinemas or oil stations. Art Deco also used the clashing colours and designs of Fauvism, notably in the work of Henri Matisse and André Derain , inspired

12551-644: The colonial possessions of the VOC. Britain captured Cape Town in 1795 , but it was returned to the Dutch by treaty in 1803. British forces occupied the Cape again in 1806 following the Battle of Blaauwberg when the Batavian Republic allied with Britain's rival, France, during the Napoleonic Wars . Following the conclusion of the war Cape Town was permanently ceded to the United Kingdom in

12714-520: The columns of the banking hall the coats of arms are presented for each of the many provinces and countries within Southern Africa in which the South African Mutual Life Assurance Society had a presence. The banking hall is now owned privately and is available for hire as an events venue. The main lifts in the building are fast ("the fastest in Africa" it was claimed when the building opened) and no expense

12877-414: The deaths of 83 people. Since the 2010s, Cape Town and the wider Western Cape province have seen the rise of a small secessionist movement . Support for parties "which have formally adopted Cape independence" was around 5% in the 2021 municipal elections . Cape Town is located at latitude 33.55° S (approximately the same as Sydney and Buenos Aires and equivalent to Casablanca and Los Angeles in

13040-652: The decorative arts, the Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna , was held in Turin in 1902. Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including Arts et décoration and L'Art décoratif moderne . Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the Sociéte des artistes français , and later in the Salon d'Automne . French nationalism also played

13203-646: The designs of Art Deco textiles, wallpaper, and painted ceramics. It took ideas from the high fashion vocabulary of the period, which featured geometric designs, chevrons, zigzags, and stylized bouquets of flowers. It was influenced by discoveries in Egyptology , and growing interest in the Orient and in African art. From 1925 onwards, it was often inspired by a passion for new machines, such as airships, automobiles and ocean liners, and by 1930 this influence resulted in

13366-436: The direction of Robert Silke at Louis Karol Architects. The name of the building was changed by the developers to Mutual Heights , a decision that did not find favour with all owners and residents involved in the new community. Despite scepticism about the name, it is generally agreed that the conversion was the first in a series of projects that re-invigorated the central business district of Cape Town . The conversion has been

13529-551: The dominant architectural style became the International Style pioneered by Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe . A handful of Art Deco hotels were built in Miami Beach after World War II, but elsewhere the style largely vanished, except in industrial design, where it continued to be used in automobile styling and products such as jukeboxes. In the 1960s, it experienced a modest academic revival, thanks in part to

13692-447: The earliest Art Deco landmark in Paris, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées , in 1912. The 1925 Exposition had major sculptural works placed around the site, pavilions were decorated with sculptural friezes, and several pavilions devoted to smaller studio sculpture. In the 1930s, a large group of prominent sculptors made works for the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne at Chaillot. Alfred Janniot made

13855-406: The east and joins the peninsula to the mainland. The Cape Town region is characterised by an extensive coastline, rugged mountain ranges, coastal plains and inland valleys. The extent of Cape Town has varied considerably over time. It originated as a small settlement at the foot of Table Mountain and has grown beyond its city limits as a metropolitan area to encompass the entire Cape Peninsula to

14018-607: The entire bottom of False Bay exposed. During this period an extensive system of dunes was formed on the sandy floor of False Bay. At this time the drainage outlets lay between Rocky Bank Cape Point to the west, and between Rocky Bank and Hangklip Ridge to the east, with the watershed roughly along the line of the contact zone east of Seal Island and Whittle Rock. Cape Town has a warm summer Mediterranean climate ( Köppen : Csb ), with mild, moderately wet winters and dry, warm summers. Winter, which lasts from June to September, may see large cold fronts entering for limited periods from

14181-563: The eroded material overlaying the older rocks, There are two internationally notable landmarks, Table Mountain and Cape Point , at opposite ends of the Peninsula Mountain Chain, with the Cape Flats and False Bay to the east and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The landscape is dominated by sandstone plateaux and ridges, which generally drop steeply at their margins to the surrounding debris slopes, interrupted by

14344-539: The event she got to go to London with Le Roux, with the bursary. Following their years in London, Le Roux was awarded this commission to work on the Mutual Building and he therefore returned to Cape Town, but only after the main building work was done - it was not sensible to undertake this meticulous work while building operations were still in progress. These frescoes are considered elsewhere as good examples of

14507-572: The façade of the new San Francisco Stock Exchange building. In Washington D.C., Michael Lantz made works for the Federal Trade Commission building. In Britain, Deco public statuary was made by Eric Gill for the BBC Broadcasting House , while Ronald Atkinson decorated the lobby of the former Daily Express Building in London (1932). One of the best known and certainly the largest public Art Deco sculpture

14670-456: The fireplace in the Maison du Collectionneur exhibit at the 1925 Exposition, which featured furniture by Ruhlmann and other prominent Art Deco designers. His murals were also prominent in the décor of the French ocean liner SS Normandie . His work was purely decorative, designed as a background or accompaniment to other elements of the décor. The other painter closely associated with the style

14833-425: The first image above) is not the same as that which is used elsewhere. The Directors' suite has great heritage value but in 2015 it was re-finished and it is now used as offices for a heritage-related project management business. The atrium extends from the roof of the banking hall to the very top of the main building. It was originally open to the weather, but it is now protected by a translucent roof, through which

14996-549: The first modern reinforced-concrete apartment building in Paris on rue Benjamin Franklin in 1903–04. Henri Sauvage , another important future Art Deco architect, built another in 1904 at 7, rue Trétaigne (1904). From 1908 to 1910, the 21-year-old Le Corbusier worked as a draftsman in Perret's office, learning the techniques of concrete construction. Perret's building had clean rectangular form, geometric decoration and straight lines,

15159-545: The first time in Paris residential buildings; the new buildings had clean lines, rectangular forms, and no decoration on the façades; they marked a clean break with the art nouveau style. Between 1910 and 1913, Perret used his experience in concrete apartment buildings to construct the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, 15 avenue Montaigne . Between 1925 and 1928 Sauvage constructed the new Art Deco façade of La Samaritaine department store in Paris. Cape Town Cape Town

15322-495: The fresco room. The building is constructed using reinforced concrete , filled in internally with bricks and plaster, and clad on the outside with granite . At first sight, the building is a striking example of the Art Deco style and many of its features epitomize this genre - however, some interior features deviate from true Art Deco and probably reflect the desire of the company to demonstrate solidity and traditional values at

15485-622: The furniture designer Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Jean Dunand , the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, and designer Paul Poiret; they combined modern forms with traditional craftsmanship and expensive materials. On the other side were the modernists, who increasingly rejected the past and wanted a style based upon advances in new technologies, simplicity, a lack of decoration, inexpensive materials, and mass production. The modernists founded their own organisation, The French Union of Modern Artists , in 1929. Its members included architects Pierre Chareau , Francis Jourdain , Robert Mallet-Stevens , Corbusier, and, in

15648-502: The furniture for the first-class salons and cabins of the French transatlantic ocean liners . The vivid hues of Art Deco came from many sources, including the exotic set designs by Léon Bakst for the Ballets Russes , which caused a sensation in Paris just before World War I. Some of the colours were inspired by the earlier Fauvism movement led by Henri Matisse ; others by the Orphism of painters such as Sonia Delaunay ; others by

15811-423: The future trademarks of Art Deco. The décor of the theatre was also revolutionary; the façade was decorated with high reliefs by Antoine Bourdelle , a dome by Maurice Denis , paintings by Édouard Vuillard , and an Art Deco curtain by Ker-Xavier Roussel . The theatre became the venue for many of the first performances of the Ballets Russes . Perret and Sauvage became the leading Art Deco architects in Paris in

15974-425: The genre of building design that captured their attention: this building was completed in 1930 and has also since been converted to residential occupation. The art deco style was chosen. However, the building is embellished with features in other styles (such as neo-classicist in the case of the banking hall) intended to reinforce the long-standing and traditional values of the Old Mutual business. The building

16137-617: The genre—see for example "Decopix - the Art Deco Architecture Site" where the Mutual Building itself is well represented. The five frescoes on the end walls and over the entrance depict more than 100 years of the history of the nation, including industrial development, the Great Trek , mining following the discovery of gold, the growth of industry and agriculture, and a hint of international travel and trade. Freschi considers that ".. in contemporary terms, Le Roux's work

16300-424: The glass window over the door to the banking hall (above) shows the iconic ziggurat shape of the building etched into the glass. Visitors must climb 17 steps to gain access to the banking hall, and towards the top they are met by the original "pill box" where security staff can observe who (and what) is entering and leaving the building. On either side of the pill box are the entrances to the main lifts – two on

16463-466: The graphic arts, in the years just before World War I. It appeared in Paris in the posters and the costume designs of Léon Bakst for the Ballets Russes, and in the catalogues of the fashion designers Paul Poiret. The illustrations of Georges Barbier , and Georges Lepape and the images in the fashion magazine La Gazette du bon ton perfectly captured the elegance and sensuality of the style. In

16626-402: The greatest possible overall height for the building without exceeding the city planning limitation of 10 storeys, and it was allowed only in view of the "set back" design of the exterior structure. The original design of the building is attributed to Louw & Louw (Cape Town architects), working with Fred Glennie (best known at the time as a mentor to architectural students) – Mr Glennie

16789-555: The idea of strengthening the concrete with a mesh of iron rods in a grill pattern. In 1893, Auguste Perret built the first concrete garage in Paris, then an apartment building, house, then, in 1913, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées . The theatre was denounced by one critic as the "Zeppelin of Avenue Montaigne", an alleged Germanic influence, copied from the Vienna Secession . Thereafter, the majority of Art Deco buildings were made of reinforced concrete, which gave greater freedom of form and less need for reinforcing pillars and columns. Perret

16952-617: The largest city in southern Africa. The metropolitan area has a long coastline on the Atlantic Ocean , which includes False Bay, and extends to the Hottentots Holland mountains to the east. The Table Mountain National Park is within the city boundaries and there are several other nature reserves and marine-protected areas within, and adjacent to, the city, protecting the diverse terrestrial and marine natural environment. The earliest known remnants of human occupation in

17115-411: The left and two on the right (there are two "staff" lifts and one "service" lift elsewhere in the building). Characteristic stainless steel trim and light fittings, such as can be seen here, are used extensively throughout the building. Given its tall marble-clad colonnades, the magnificent banking hall would be more properly described as an example of "neo-classicism" although the light fittings echo

17278-548: The left bank, and along the banks of the Seine. The Grand Palais, the largest hall in the city, was filled with exhibits of decorative arts from the participating countries. There were 15,000 exhibitors from twenty different countries, including Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the new Soviet Union . Germany was not invited because of tensions after

17441-570: The legislative capital of the Union, and later of the Republic of South Africa . By the time of the 1936 census , Johannesburg had overtaken Cape Town as the largest city in the country. In 1945 the expansion of the Cape Town foreshore was completed adding an additional 194 ha (480 acres) to the City Bowl area to the city centre. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, Cape Town was one of

17604-475: The most important tourist destination in the country. Cape Town has been named the best travel city in the world every year since 2013 in the Telegraph Travel Awards. The legacy of apartheid's spatial planning is still evident, with significant disparities between affluent areas and impoverished townships . 60% of the city's population live in townships and informal settlements far from

17767-765: The most racially integrated cities in South Africa. In the 1948 national elections , the National Party won on a platform of apartheid (racial segregation) under the slogan of " swart gevaar " (Afrikaans for "black danger"). This led to the erosion and eventual abolition of the Cape's multiracial franchise . In 1950, the apartheid government first introduced the Group Areas Act , which classified and segregated urban areas according to race. Formerly multi-racial suburbs of Cape Town were either purged of residents deemed unlawful by apartheid legislation, or demolished. The most infamous example of this in Cape Town

17930-493: The mountain. To the immediate south of the city, the Cape Peninsula is a scenic mountainous spine jutting 40 km (25 mi) southward into the Atlantic Ocean and terminating at Cape Point . There are over 70 peaks above 300 m (980 ft) within Cape Town's official metropolitan limits . Many of the city's suburbs lie on the large plain called the Cape Flats , which extends over 50 km (30 mi) to

18093-530: The movement known as Les Nabis , and in the work of symbolist painter Odilon Redon, who designed fireplace screens and other decorative objects. Bright shades were a feature of the work of fashion designer Paul Poiret , whose work influenced both Art Deco fashion and interior design. The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1910–1913), by Auguste Perret , was the first landmark Art Deco building completed in Paris. Previously, reinforced concrete had been used only for industrial and apartment buildings, Perret had built

18256-469: The mural and the frieze, followed by some other details of the directors' rooms. The sea plane (second picture) is probably a Martin M-130 , which is not recorded as having serviced South Africa (it worked the pacific routes). This is probably "artistic licence" on the part of Ord-Browne. It is of note that the etched ziggurat icon on the glass over the entrance to the board room (see the enlarged version of

18419-652: The new style were the Museum of Public Works by Auguste Perret (now the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council ), the Palais de Chaillot by Louis-Hippolyte Boileau , Jacques Carlu and Léon Azéma , and the Palais de Tokyo of the 1937 Paris International Exposition ; they looked out at the grandiose pavilion of Nazi Germany, designed by Albert Speer , which faced the equally grandiose socialist-realist pavilion of Stalin's Soviet Union. After World War II,

18582-399: The news of the protests against Bantu Education by organising gatherings and marches of their own. A number of school buildings were burnt down and the protest action was met with forceful resistance from the police. Cape Town has been home to many leaders of the anti-apartheid movement . In Table Bay , 10 km (6 mi) from the city is Robben Island . This penitentiary island was

18745-432: The north to Cape Point in the south, with an area of about 470 km (180 sq mi), and it displays more topographical variety than other similar sized areas in southern Africa, and consequently spectacular scenery. There are diverse low-nutrient soils, large rocky outcrops, scree slopes, a mainly rocky coastline with embayed beaches, and considerable local variation in climatic conditions. The sedimentary rocks of

18908-503: The northern hemisphere) and longitude 18.25° E. Table Mountain , with its near vertical cliffs and flat-topped summit over 1,000 m (3,300 ft) high, and with Devil's Peak and Lion's Head on either side, together form a dramatic mountainous backdrop enclosing the central area of Cape Town, the so-called City Bowl . A thin strip of cloud, known colloquially as the "tablecloth" ("Karos" in Afrikaans ), sometimes forms on top of

19071-513: The once continuous Table Mountain Group sandstone cover from over the Cape Flats and False Bay, and leaving high residual mountain ridges. At times the sea covered the Cape Flats and Noordhoek valley and the Cape Peninsula was then a group of islands. During glacial periods the sea level dropped to expose the bottom of False Bay to weathering and erosion, with the last major regression leaving

19234-511: The other contemporaneous tall buildings in the world. Those involved in the design of the building travelled widely to study inspirational examples of corporate buildings elsewhere in the world. They learnt about the latest approaches to lighting, ventilation and fire protection in the US, South America, England and Sweden. In the US, the Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles is one example of

19397-519: The period was Ludwig Hohlwein , who created colourful and dramatic posters for music festivals, beers, and, late in his career, for the Nazi Party. During the Art Nouveau period, posters usually advertised theatrical products or cabarets. In the 1920s, travel posters, made for steamship lines and airlines, became extremely popular. The style changed notably in the 1920s, to focus attention on

19560-423: The product being advertised. The images became simpler, precise, more linear, more dynamic, and were often placed against a single-color background. In France, popular Art Deco designers included Charles Loupot and Paul Colin , who became famous for his posters of American singer and dancer Josephine Baker . Jean Carlu designed posters for Charlie Chaplin movies, soaps, and theatres; in the late 1930s he emigrated to

19723-474: The products, all the major Paris department stores, and major designers had their own pavilions. The Exposition had a secondary purpose in promoting products from French colonies in Africa and Asia, including ivory and exotic woods. The Hôtel du Collectionneur was a popular attraction at the Exposition; it displayed the new furniture designs of Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, as well as Art Deco fabrics, carpets, and

19886-472: The push for self-governance in the Cape. With expansion came calls for greater independence from the UK, with the Cape attaining its own parliament (1854) and a locally accountable Prime Minister (1872). Suffrage was established according to the non-racial Cape Qualified Franchise . During the 1850s and 1860s, additional plant species were introduced from Australia by the British authorities. Notably rooikrans

20049-513: The quality and attention to detail that was applied to this project by the architects, artists and designers. The paragraphs below now visit each of the significant areas and features of the building in turn. The building incorporates a range of significant features. Black, gold-veined onyx is used in the Darling Street foyer, the ceiling of which is over 15 metres high and finished with gold leaf , laid by Italian workmen. The view of

20212-536: The region were found at Peers Cave in Fish Hoek and have been dated to between 15,000 and 12,000 years old. Various Khoikhoi groups notably the Gorinaiqua lived on these lands for thousands of years. Khoikhoi communities were some of the wealthiest groups in Africa and their lands and cattles would go on to build colonial Cape Town and the rest of South Africa. Bartolomeu Dias . Dias, the first European to reach

20375-515: The relief sculptures on the façade of the Palais de Tokyo. The Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris , and the esplanade in front of the Palais de Chaillot, facing the Eiffel Tower, was crowded with new statuary by Charles Malfray , Henry Arnold, and many others. Public Art Deco sculpture was almost always representational, usually of heroic or allegorical figures related to the purpose of

20538-450: The salon passed through the full-scale model. The façade of the house, designed by Duchamp-Villon, was not very radical by modern standards; the lintels and pediments had prismatic shapes, but otherwise the façade resembled an ordinary house of the period. For the two rooms, Mare designed the wallpaper, which featured stylized roses and floral patterns, along with upholstery, furniture and carpets, all with flamboyant and colourful motifs. It

20701-438: The same time as contemporaneous, forward-looking values. It is 276 feet (84 m) high, as measured from the ground floor to the top of the tower, but the building is often listed as being more than 90 metres high (even as high as 96.8 metres on the Old Mutual web site); this probably takes account of the "spire" at the top. Having only 10 levels (" storeys ") above ground level in the main part of this tall building (excluding

20864-493: The side walls, the second, third and fourth are on the long wall that includes the main entrance. The fifth image includes a representation of the Mutual Building itself, the tallest building in what is known as the "City Bowl", below the slopes of Table Mountain . This did not remain true for long, it was only one year later that the General Post Office was built on the other (seaward side) of Darling Street, and

21027-557: The simplification of forms to their geometric essentials: the cylinder, the sphere, the cone. In 1912, the artists of the Section d'Or exhibited works considerably more accessible to the general public than the analytical Cubism of Picasso and Braque. The Cubist vocabulary was poised to attract fashion, furniture and interior designers. In the Art Décoratif section of the 1912 Salon d'Automne, an architectural installation

21190-479: The site of a maximum security prison where many famous apartheird-era political prisoners served long prison sentences. Famous prisoners include activist, lawyer and future president Nelson Mandela who served 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment on the island, as well as two other future presidents, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma . In one of the most famous moments marking the end of apartheid, Nelson Mandela made his first public speech since his imprisonment, from

21353-571: The social values of the time and of the economic state of the nation, but all as seen from a European or "colonial" perspective, as explained by Freschi. Within 20 years (in the late 1950s) the Old Mutual began to vacate the building, moving in stages to new offices at Mutual Park in Pinelands , Cape Town . By the 1990s, only assorted tenants remained, the last of which departed in May 2003. At this time, conversion to residential occupation began under

21516-574: The south, the Cape Flats , the Helderberg basin and part of the Steenbras catchment area to the east, and the Tygerberg hills, Blouberg and other areas to the north. Robben Island in Table Bay is also part of Cape Town. It is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and False Bay to the south. To the north and east, the extent is demarcated by boundaries of neighbouring municipalities within

21679-546: The style called Streamline Moderne . The event that marked the zenith of the style and gave it its name was the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts which took place in Paris from April to October in 1925. This was officially sponsored by the French government, and covered a site in Paris of 55 acres, running from the Grand Palais on the right bank to Les Invalides on

21842-405: The subject of a number of architecture and design awards. In February 2012, the large "Old Mutual" sign on the east side of the building was removed, leaving little external evidence of the commercial origins of the building; in 2015 Old Mutual Properties finally disposed of the remaining portions of the interior that had not been sold previously, including the banking hall, the directors suite and

22005-482: The three levels of basement car parking, and the additional levels in the tower), it is evident that the spacing between floors is generous — generally each floor is about 5 metres (16 ft) above (or below) the next. In one of the meeting rooms on the eighth level (the Assembly Hall - see below), the curtains alone are more than six metres long. This generous spacing between floors was intended to achieve

22168-535: The time, and the " ideals of colonial government promulgated by Rhodes in the late nineteenth century ". The Mutual Building is now converted to residential use, although some parts of the building are used commercially. For example, the Banking Hall (which is now an events venue) and the retail shops that operate outside on the ground level. The Old Mutual business has a long history. In 1845 John Fairbairn (a Scot) founded "The Mutual Life Assurance Society of

22331-477: The title of the first modern exhibition on the subject, held by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, Les Années 25 : Art déco, Bauhaus, Stijl, Esprit nouveau , which covered a variety of major styles in the 1920s and 1930s. The term was then used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in The Times (London, 12 November), describing the different styles at the exhibit. Art Deco gained currency as

22494-420: The tower can be seen extending even higher. The circular windows visible here are incorporated into the apartments that now occupy the front of the building. The rising nature of the ziggurat mass of the exterior of the building is reinforced by the prismoid (triangular) windows, which extend up and down the height of the building. These windows are of note because they set the Mutual Building apart from some of

22657-507: The war; the United States, misunderstanding the purpose of the exhibit, declined to participate. The event was visited by sixteen million people during its seven-month run. The rules of the exhibition required that all work be modern; no historical styles were allowed. The main purpose of the Exhibit was to promote the French manufacturers of luxury furniture, porcelain, glass, metalwork, textiles, and other decorative products. To further promote

22820-539: The west side of False Bay and the Cape Flats. On the east side are the Helderberg and Hottentots Holland mountains. The three main rock formations are the late- Precambrian Malmebury group (sedimentary and metamorphic rock), the Cape Granite suit, comprising the huge Peninsula, Kuilsrivier-Helderberg, and Stellenbosch batholiths, that were intruded into the Malmesbury Group about 630 million years ago, and

22983-457: The whole family of styles known as "Déco". Parisian department stores and fashion designers also played an important part in the rise of Art Deco. Prominent businesses such as silverware firm Christofle , glass designer René Lalique , and the jewellers Louis Cartier and Boucheron began designing products in more modern styles. Beginning in 1900, department stores recruited decorative artists to work in their design studios. The decoration of

23146-471: The writings of architectural historians such as Bevis Hillier. In the 1970s efforts were made in the United States and Europe to preserve the best examples of Art Deco architecture, and many buildings were restored and repurposed. Postmodern architecture , which first appeared in the 1980s, like Art Deco, often includes purely decorative features. Deco continues to inspire designers, and is often used in contemporary fashion, jewellery, and toiletries. There

23309-479: The years since Apartheid. Cape Town has experienced economic growth and development in the post-apartheid era. The city has become a major economic hub in South Africa, attracting international investment and tourism. The Democratic Alliance (DA), a liberal political party which came to power in Cape Town in 2006, has been credited with improving bureaucratic efficiency, public safety and fostering economic development. Opinion polls show that South Africans see it as

23472-483: Was a brilliant publicist for modernist architecture; he stated that a house was simply "a machine to live in", and tirelessly promoted the idea that Art Deco was the past and modernism was the future. Le Corbusier's ideas were gradually adopted by architecture schools, and the aesthetics of Art Deco were abandoned. The same features that made Art Deco popular in the beginning, its craftsmanship, rich materials and ornament, led to its decline. The Great Depression that began in

23635-499: Was a distinct break from traditional décor. The critic Emile Sedeyn described Mare's work in the magazine Art et Décoration : "He does not embarrass himself with simplicity, for he multiplies flowers wherever they can be put. The effect he seeks is obviously one of picturesqueness and gaiety. He achieves it." The Cubist element was provided by the paintings. The installation was attacked by some critics as extremely radical, which helped make for its success. This architectural installation

23798-486: Was a prominent Art Deco studio sculptor, whose work was shown at the 1925 Exposition. He worked with bronze, marble, ivory, onyx, gold, alabaster and other precious materials. François Pompon was a pioneer of modern stylised animalier sculpture. He was not fully recognised for his artistic accomplishments until the age of 67 at the Salon d'Automne of 1922 with the work Ours blanc , also known as The White Bear , now in

23961-566: Was also a founder of the Wiener Werkstätte (1903–1932), an association of craftsmen and interior designers working in the new style. This became the model for the Compagnie des arts français , created in 1919, which brought together André Mare , and Louis Süe , the first leading French Art Deco designers and decorators. The emergence of Art Deco was closely connected with the rise in status of decorative artists, who until late in

24124-435: Was also a pioneer in covering the concrete with ceramic tiles , both for protection and decoration. The architect Le Corbusier first learned the uses of reinforced concrete working as a draftsman in Perret's studio. Other new technologies that were important to Art Deco were new methods in producing plate glass , which was less expensive and allowed much larger and stronger windows, and for mass-producing aluminium , which

24287-405: Was completed in 1939 and opened early in 1940 with a great fanfare. The local paper provided a 16-page supplement, and South African architects and dignitaries enthused about it. In his definitive examination of the design of the building, Federico Freschi summarises the status of the building thus: The building is listed elsewhere as a notable building, and it is regarded as an important example of

24450-730: Was copied worldwide. In decoration, many different styles were borrowed and used by Art Deco. They included pre-modern art from around the world and observable at the Musée du Louvre , Musée de l'Homme and the Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie . There was also popular interest in archaeology due to excavations at Pompeii , Troy , and the tomb of the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun . Artists and designers integrated motifs from ancient Egypt , Africa , Mesopotamia , Greece , Rome , Asia, Mesoamerica and Oceania with Machine Age elements. Other styles borrowed included Futurism , Orphism, Functionalism , and Modernism in general. Cubism discovers its decorative potential within

24613-535: Was exhibited known as La Maison Cubiste . The façade was designed by Raymond Duchamp-Villon . The décor of the house was by André Mare . La Maison Cubiste was a furnished installation with a façade, a staircase, wrought iron banisters, a bedroom, a living room—the Salon Bourgeois , where paintings by Albert Gleizes , Jean Metzinger , Marie Laurencin , Marcel Duchamp , Fernand Léger and Roger de La Fresnaye were hung. Thousands of spectators at

24776-572: Was first used in France in 1858 in the Bulletin de la Société française de photographie . In 1868, the Le Figaro newspaper used the term objets d'art décoratifs for objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de l'Opéra . In 1875, furniture designers, textile, jewellers, glass-workers, and other craftsmen were officially given the status of artists by the French government. In response,

24939-567: Was introduced to stabilise the sand of the Cape Flats to allow for a road connecting the peninsula with the rest of the African continent and eucalyptus was used to drain marshes. In 1859 the first railway line was built by the Cape Government Railways and a system of railways rapidly expanded in the 1870s. The discovery of diamonds in Griqualand West in 1867, and the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in 1886, prompted

25102-582: Was named the best place in the world to visit by The New York Times , and was similarly ranked number one by The Daily Telegraph in both 2016 and 2023. Located on the shore of Table Bay , the City Bowl area of Cape Town is the oldest urban area in the Western Cape , with a significant cultural heritage. It was founded by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a supply station for Dutch ships sailing to East Africa , India , and

25265-478: Was no section set aside for painting at the 1925 Exposition. Art deco painting was by definition decorative, designed to decorate a room or work of architecture, so few painters worked exclusively in the style, but two painters are closely associated with Art Deco. Jean Dupas painted Art Deco murals for the Bordeaux Pavilion at the 1925 Decorative Arts Exposition in Paris, and also painted the picture over

25428-417: Was perfectly fit to fulfil its function. Modern industrial methods meant that furniture and buildings could be mass-produced, not made by hand. The Art Deco interior designer Paul Follot defended Art Deco in this way: "We know that man is never content with the indispensable and that the superfluous is always needed...If not, we would have to get rid of music, flowers, and perfumes..!" However, Le Corbusier

25591-468: Was seen to be distinctly progressive and very much in keeping with the ostensibly liberal party line of Jan Smuts ' coalition government". The panels are reproduced below, and selected portions from them are provided in the images that follow. The five panels are presented left to right, in a clockwise direction when standing in the Assembly Room, back to the windows. The first and fifth are on

25754-442: Was spared – even in the basement parking area, the lifts are trimmed with black marble. Each door has an etched representation of an indigenous bird or animal from South Africa, with significant plants as additional decoration, or in some cases the corporate logo of the time. The individual etchings in detail (click on the images to see the full-size version): These designs are attributed to Ivan Mitford-Barberton . Perhaps

25917-409: Was subsequently exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show , New York City, Chicago and Boston. Thanks largely to the exhibition, the term "Cubist" began to be applied to anything modern, from women's haircuts to clothing to theater performances." The Cubist influence continued within Art Deco, even as Deco branched out in many other directions. Cubism's adumbrated geometry became coin of the realm in

26080-563: Was supported in his early career by the famous British architect Herbert Baker , who provided bursaries so that Le Roux could spend time in London and elsewhere. In London he undertook a mural in South Africa House with Eleanor Esmonde-White . An acquaintance (still living) of Le Roux and Esmonde-White recalls that Baker insisted that Eleanor Esmonde-White be awarded a bursary, despite gender-related objections from elsewhere; in

26243-404: Was tagged with other names, like style moderne , Moderne , modernistic or style contemporain , and was not recognized as a distinct and homogenous style. New materials and technologies, especially reinforced concrete , were key to the development and appearance of Art Deco. The first concrete house was built in 1853 in the Paris suburbs by François Coignet. In 1877 Joseph Monier introduced

26406-490: Was the suburb of District Six . After it was declared a whites-only area in 1965, all housing there was demolished and over 60,000 residents were forcibly removed. Many of these residents were relocated to the Cape Flats . The earliest of the Cape Flats forced removals saw the expulsion of Black South Africans to the Langa , Cape Town's first and oldest township, in line with the 1923 Native Urban Areas Act . Under apartheid,

26569-582: Was used for building and window frames and later, by Corbusier, Warren McArthur , and others, for lightweight furniture. The architects of the Vienna Secession (formed 1897), especially Josef Hoffmann , had a notable influence on Art Deco. His Stoclet Palace , in Brussels (1905–1911), was a prototype of the Art Deco style, featuring geometric volumes, symmetry, straight lines, concrete covered with marble plaques, finely-sculpted ornament, and lavish interiors, including mosaic friezes by Gustav Klimt . Hoffmann

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