Nine surprising art deco hotspots around the world

From Montevideo to Manila, we shine a light on cities around the globe with an unexpected collection of art deco buildings as part of our Art Deco Centenary series.

Art deco dominated in Paris, New York and Miami in the 1920s and 30s, but the style also stretched far and wide, making an impact in cities across Asia, South America and New Zealand.

It has been dubbed "the first international style" because of the way it spread across the world – including to unexpected places.

Many aspiring architects moved to Europe and the USA to study during this time and brought art deco influences back to their home countries, blending the style with elements denoting local traditional architecture.

Below, we've collected some of the many cities around the world that became hotspots of the art deco architectural style, including cities in New Zealand, China, Argentina and the Philippines.

Napier, New Zealand

Low-rise 1930s buildings line the streets of Napier, a city in New Zealand where tens of thousands of visitors flock to see the local architecture and vintage car parades during an annual art deco festival.

Napier's high concentration of art deco buildings is the result of an earthquake in 1931, which sparked fires that destroyed most of the city's commercial centre.

Rather than try to replicate its past, the city chose to look ahead and rebuild largely in the popular style of the time, art deco. Many of the buildings were designed by Kiwi architect Louis Hay, including the eye-catching National Tobacco Company Building (pictured).

The relief stucco decoration typical of art deco buildings was a relatively cheap way to add ornament to Napier's architecture. It also avoided the application of stuck-on elements, which had fallen from the city's former buildings and caused deaths and injuries during the earthquake.

Mumbai, India

Mumbai has the world's second-largest collection of art deco buildings after Miami. While the city lacks the glitzy skyscrapers that typically come to mind when picturing art deco buildings, it is adorned with streamlined homes and cinemas, some of which are protected by UNESCO.

A large number of art deco buildings are located along Marine Drive, a three-kilometre-long coastal promenade at the southern tip of Mumbai. A particular portion of the city, around the Oval Maidan park, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018 for its Victorian gothic public buildings on the eastern side and art deco buildings on the western side, including those stretching Marine Drive.

Mumbai's art deco buildings are set apart from the rest of the world for their response to the hot climate and use of tropical motifs like palm branches and elephants. This has given the city's unique style the name indo-deco.

Non profit group Art Deco Mumbai was established in 2016 to raise awareness of the city's architecture and document the hundreds of buildings built between 1930 and 1950 in an interactive map. According to the group, there are around 600 art deco buildings in the city.

Shanghai, China

In the early 20th century, Shanghai thrived as a major trading port, facilitating its boom in art deco architecture.

Similarly to Mumbai, the city adopted its own take on art deco as both western designers who moved to Shanghai and Chinese designers studying abroad brought the style to the city.

The signature art deco symmetry and geometry were combined with elements informed by traditional features such as pagoda roofs, as seen in the Greater Shanghai Municipal Library (pictured above), which was designed by Chinese architect Dong Dayou as part of the 1929 Greater Shanghai Plan.

Drawing from his studies at the University of Minnesota and Columbia University, Dong also designed a city hall and museum that blended Chinese traditionalism with art deco for the masterplan, which was only partially completed before Shanghai fell to the Japanese in 1937.

Tiong Bahru, Singapore

Regarded as Singapore's oldest public housing estate, Tiong Bahru is an unexpected trove of art deco architecture in south east Asia.

Developed in the 1930s by the Singapore Improvement Trust, the neighbourhood showcases a distinct interpretation of art deco, drawing from the streamline moderne style, a late development of the movement.

Characterised by curved facades, porthole windows and sweeping horizontal and vertical lines, its low-rise residential blocks echo the streamlined forms of ocean liners, aeroplanes and trains.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Argentinian capital Buenos Aires has numerous examples of art deco buildings, including the Teatro Metropolitan cinema, Teatro Opera, and the Edificio Kavanagh residential skyscraper, which was the tallest building in Latin America when completed in 1936.

Outside the city, Italian-Argentine architect Francisco Salamone made a significant contribution to bringing art deco to Buenos Aires province, having completed more than 60 municipal buildings in the style between 1936 and 1940.

He was hired by conservative politician and Buenos Aires province governor Manuel Fresco, who granted Salamone a great amount of creative freedom to design buildings intended to inspire a sense of local pride.

Across 25 rural towns, Salamone designed town halls, cemeteries, slaughterhouses and plazas, bringing his own futuristic flare to the art deco style.

Montevideo, Uruguay

Across the Río de la Plata estuary from Buenos Aires is Uruguay's capital city, Montevideo. The city's 18 de Julio Avenue is a popular retail street and tourist destination known for its art deco architecture.

Situated on the street is the Palacio Díaz, which completed in 1929 to the designs of Uruguayan architects Gonzalo Vázquez Barrière and Rafael Ruano. It is one of Montevideo's best examples of the art deco style, with its symmetrical facade evocative of New York skyscrapers.

Another notable art deco building on 18 de Julio Avenue is the 1933 Palacio Tapié, which features decorative geometry on its curved corner facade.

On the street's western end, where it meets the Plaza Independencia, is the Palacio Rinaldi (pictured above), which was built in 1929 with geometric balconies and colourful facade details.

Manila, Philippines

Manila's art deco heritage reflects the city's colonial past and its position as a cultural and commercial hub in south east Asia. The style arrived in Manila in the 1930s through a mix of American colonial influence and Filipino adaptation.

Designed by Filipino architect Juan M Arellano in 1931, the Manila Metropolitan Theater (pictured above) is one of the city's most iconic examples of art deco, featuring geometric motifs, tropical floral motifs and stained-glass windows. Arellano's design combined western art deco principles with indigenous details, creating a distinct Filipino interpretation of the style.

Another notable structure is the First United Building, which was completed in 1928 and designed by local architect Andres Luna de San Pedro. The building features octagonal windows, low-relief medallions and "tower-like" components.

Despite the destruction that world war two inflicted on Manila and subsequent urban development, remnants of the city's art deco past remain visible in restored landmarks and historic districts.

Glasgow, UK

Glasgow is well known for its art nouveau architecture, which was championed by local architect Charles Rennie Macintosh and his peers around the turn of the 20th century, but the city also has some key examples of the art deco style that came after.

Some examples of art deco building that are still standing include the Marks and Spencer building on Sauchiehall Street, which opened in 1935, and Glasgow's O2 Academy music venue, which originally opened in 1932 as the New Bedford Cinema.

Aiming to demonstrate the strength of the British Empire to the wider country and the world, Glasgow hosted the international Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park in 1939, which saw a number of temporary art deco structures built. The sole exhibition building designed to be permanent was the Palace of Art, which now a sports venue.

Glasgow's 10-storey Beresford Hotel (pictured above) was also built to coincide with the Empire Exhibition and provide accommodation for its visitors. Now converted into flats, it showcases features of art deco's streamline moderne sub-movement with its rounded elements.

Asmara, Eritrea

Eritrea's capital has been dubbed "Africa's Miami" because of its plentiful art deco architecture. This is a legacy of the city's colonial past, with nearly half of its residents Italian during the 1930s.

With encouragement from Benito Mussolini, Italian architects flocked to Asmara around this time to try out bold ideas away from more conservative European sensibilities.

Among the most famous results is Giuseppe Pettazzi's Fiat Tagliero service station (pictured). At the building's opening in 1938, Pettazzi reportedly pulled out a gun, either to threaten a builder who voiced concerns about its structural soundness or to threaten to kill himself if it collapsed.

Other art deco buildings in the city include the Cinema Impero, the restaurant Bar Zilli, a bowling alley with stained-glass windows and a garage that resembles a ship.

UNESCO declared the city a World Heritage site in 2017, calling it "an exceptional example of early modernist urbanism at the beginning of the 20th century and its application in an African context".

Art Deco Centenary

This article is part of Dezeen's Art Deco Centenary series, which explores art deco architecture and design 100 years on from the "arts décoratifs" exposition in Paris that later gave the style its name.

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