Architects' Professional Alliance with the Furniture Design Industry in Interwar America

The professional alliance between disciplines of architecture and furniture design in the interwar years as displayed in the prominent architectural exhibitions of the era is interesting in the context of professionalization of American architecture. The way furniture design gradually became part of the architectural shows not only reflected but provided the practical field in which the architectural institution sought, under the new social order since the mid 1910s, a new professional cast?departing from the former milieu in the realm of high-art by the Beaux-Arts Movement. Exhibitions held by the Architectural League of New York in the 1920s revealed that the early impetus for reformation toward efficiency had been subsumed by the system of Beaux-Arts. By contrast, “The Architect and the Industrial Arts” show of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which the most prominent architects of the era exercised their professional expertise in the design of “Moderne Style” interior furnishings, clearly shows how architects, in the milieu of expanding commercial market, sought to align their profession as industrial designers.