Art Nouveau vs Art Deco: the difference in architecture, with buildings to compare

Architecture · 4 September 2026

Art Nouveau (about 1890–1914) draws its lines from plants and water: whiplash curves, lilies, dragonflies, wrought iron bent like stems, facades that avoid the right angle. Art Deco (about 1920–1940) draws its lines from machines and speed: zigzags, chevrons, sunbursts, stepped towers, chrome and polished stone, strict symmetry. The two share a love of ornament and a refusal of historical styles, which is why they are confused, but they belong to different worlds: one before the First World War, organic and handmade; the other after it, geometric and industrial. Below are the differences in five looks, a comparison table, and buildings from the Buildings by style collection to test yourself on.

Look 1. The line: curve or angle

Art Nouveau is the curve. The railing of Victor Horta's Hôtel Tassel in Brussels (1893), the first Art Nouveau building, twists like a vine, and the same "whiplash" runs through Hector Guimard's Paris Métro entrances and the balconies of Gaudí's Casa Batlló (1906), which has not a single straight line. Art Deco is the angle. The crown of the Chrysler Building (1930) is seven tiers of stepped arches with triangular windows; the lobby of the Empire State Building (1931) is a fan of straight metal rays. If the ornament bends, it is Nouveau; if it zigzags, it is Deco.

Look 2. Where the motifs come from

Art Nouveau motifs are natural: irises, lilies, peacock feathers, dragonflies, women's hair flowing into the frame, seaweed and waves. Its architects had studied Japanese prints and botanical drawings. Art Deco motifs are manufactured or ancient-geometric: sunbursts, chevrons, fountains frozen into steps, stylised eagles and gazelles, and borrowings from Egypt after Tutankhamun's tomb was opened in 1922, from Aztec temples and from the ziggurat. A Deco lily is a lily cut into a stencil; a Nouveau lily grows.

Look 3. Materials

Art Nouveau exposed iron and glass and shaped them by hand: the iron frame of the Tassel house, the ceramic tiles of Otto Wagner's Majolica House in Vienna (1899), the broken tile of Gaudí, the stained glass of the Palau de la Música in Barcelona. Art Deco used the new luxury materials of the machine age: stainless steel, aluminium, chrome, Bakelite, black glass, polished granite and marble in contrasting colours, and terracotta panels moulded in series. Where Nouveau looks like it was forged by one craftsman, Deco looks like it came off a very expensive production line.

Look 4. Symmetry and mass

Art Nouveau facades are often asymmetrical, because they follow the plan inside and the growth of the ornament: the Secession Building in Vienna, the Horta house, Gaudí's Casa Milà with its rolling stone waves. Art Deco is symmetrical and massive: the stepped setbacks of New York skyscrapers, required by the 1916 zoning law, turned into the style's signature, and a Deco building usually rises to a central tower with wings stepping down on both sides, like Rockefeller Center or the Hoover Dam intake towers.

Look 5. Dates and where you find them

Art Nouveau: 1890 to the First World War, in Brussels, Paris, Nancy, Barcelona, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Riga, Glasgow, Moscow and Saint Petersburg. It barely reached the United States as architecture, apart from Louis Sullivan's ornament in Chicago and Tiffany's glass. Art Deco: 1920 to 1940, named after the 1925 Paris exhibition, and its capital is the United States: Manhattan, Miami Beach with about 800 Deco buildings, Los Angeles, Tulsa, Detroit, Cincinnati. Union Terminal in Cincinnati, the Guardian Building in Detroit and the Hoover Dam are as Deco as anything in Paris.

Comparison table

• Years. Art Nouveau 1890–1914 vs Art Deco 1920–1940.
• Line. Curved, flowing, whiplash vs straight, zigzag, stepped.
• Motifs. Flowers, insects, hair, water vs sunbursts, chevrons, machines, Egypt and the Aztecs.
• Materials. Wrought iron, stained glass, ceramic tile, carved wood vs chrome, steel, aluminium, black glass, polished stone.
• Composition. Often asymmetrical, following the interior vs symmetrical, stepped, a central tower.
• Mood. Dream, nature, the handmade vs speed, luxury, the machine.
• Typical building. A townhouse, a metro entrance, a department store vs a skyscraper, a cinema, a hotel, a dam.
• Capitals. Brussels, Paris, Barcelona, Vienna vs New York, Miami, Paris, Shanghai.

Where people get confused

Both styles are decorative and both were reactions against copying the past, so a gilded lobby with lots of ornament could be either. Three quick checks. First, look for a right angle: Deco loves them, Nouveau avoids them. Second, look for symmetry: a Deco facade is a mirror image of itself. Third, check the year: nothing Art Nouveau was built after 1914, and almost nothing Art Deco before 1920. Streamline Moderne, the late 1930s Deco with rounded corners and horizontal lines from ships and trains, is the one Deco variant with curves, but they are machine curves, arcs and cylinders, never a plant.

Buildings to compare

Art Nouveau: Hôtel Tassel, Hôtel Solvay and the Horta house in Brussels; Castel Béranger in Paris; Casa Batlló, Casa Milà, Park Güell and the Palau de la Música in Barcelona; the Secession Building, the Majolica House and the Karlsplatz station in Vienna; the Municipal House in Prague; Alberta Street in Riga; the Glasgow School of Art; the Hotel Metropol and the Ryabushinsky mansion in Moscow; the Singer House in Saint Petersburg.

Art Deco: the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall in New York; the Guardian Building in Detroit; Union Terminal in Cincinnati; the Hoover Dam; the Ocean Drive hotels of Miami Beach; the Palais de Chaillot and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris; the Bund in Shanghai; Napier in New Zealand, rebuilt entirely in Deco after the 1931 earthquake. The whole sequence of styles is in architectural styles in chronological order.

Open the sections: buildings by style, ancient temples of the world, all articles.