Space Age Design vs Streamline Moderne
スペースエイジ・デザイン / ストリームライン・モダン
Space Age Design comes from Postwar Industrial Design and Streamline Moderne from Modern Architecture. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Space Age Design
Translates the hopes of the space race into capsule forms, spheres, molded plastic, vivid color and lightweight furniture.
Streamline Moderne
.jpg)
Gives even stationary things speed and machine-age optimism through streamlines, horizontals, rounded corners and metal.
| Space Age Design | Streamline Moderne | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1957–early 1970s | 1930s–1940s |
| Family | Postwar Industrial Design | Modern Architecture |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Capsule forms / Molded plastic / Spheres / Vivid synthetic color | Streamlined forms / Horizontal bands / Rounded corners / Chrome |
| Best used for | Product and fixture displays where a light, colored object should ask to be touched. · Events on space or the future needing chairs and lighting as part of the set. | Giving stationary buildings or equipment an impression of speed · Shaping appliances or vehicle bodies as one mass with fewer joints |
| Type | Choose a rounded geometric sans and match its curves to the shells. | Wide horizontal letterforms carried sideways by speed lines |
| Composition | Scatter spheres and egg forms across the floor against one bright wall. | Run horizontal bands, round every corner, align openings wide |
| Material | Molded plastic, foam, glowing milky panels, saturated single color paint. | Chrome, opal glass, curved metal panels with the joints hidden |
| Caution | Curves and vivid color alone read as cheap plastic, so unless mold seams and paint gloss are controlled the result looks like a toy. | Curves and horizontals added without any functional reason become a pattern that merely looks fast, no different from the ornament they replaced. |