The Empire Exhibition of Scotland, 1938: the image and representation of an ephemeral modernity

Abstract

[EN] In 1938 Glasgow was the location for the Empire Exhibition, an event that made little international impact because it was held a bare year before the Second World War, at a time when conflict between the European Great Powers was beginning to seem inevitable. However, within the field of the development of design and of modern architecture in Great Britain, a study of this exposition is of considerable interest, as it shows how Art Deco, with its slender shapes and vitalism in Streamline Moderne style, had gradually been gaining ground over the cold rationalist style brought in from 1933 onwards by a number of the expatriate architects from Germany and other countries.

[ES] En 1938 tuvo lugar en Glasgow la Empire Exhibition, un evento de escasa repercusión internacional por celebrarse un año antes de la segunda guerra mundial, cuando el conflicto entre las potencias europeas se comenzaba a percibir como inevitable. Sin embargo su estudio, dentro del ámbito del desarrollo del diseño y de la arquitectura moderna en Gran Bretaña, tiene mayor interés, al mostrar cómo el Art Déco, con sus formas gráciles y su vitalismo a lo Streamline Moderne, se había ido imponiendo con fuerza sobre el frío estilo racionalista importado desde 1933 por algunos de los arquitectos inmigrados desde Alemania y otros países.