Table of Contents

Art Nouveau
   - Romantic garden 1898-1914

Architecture
This short-lived international style, common in Europe, attempts to break with historical precedent. Buildings are elaborately decorated with organic, sinuous plant forms reminiscent of Celtic designs. Prague, Vienna, and Riga have an especially large number of preserved apartment and commercial buildings from this period. The buildings and park designed by Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona, Spain, go beyond the elaborate Nouveau decoration of a building to an organically expressive form. In America the Nouveau Style is seen in the decorative and graphic arts, with the architectural ideas absorbed into the Prairie style. The best examples are commercial buildings designed by Louis Sullivan, while the best-known designer of décor is Louis Comfort Tiffany. The typically Nouveau decorative tiles and elaborate wrought iron gates, fences and garden structures find a place in the late Victorian and the emerging Arts & Crafts garden.