New Indies Style Dutch East Indies. The 1920s and 1930s saw the advent of Modernism in the Dutch East Indies. Typical features included flat roofs and cubic forms, with minimal consideration of the tropics. Art Deco ornamentation was sometimes incorporated into the design. Albert Frederik Aalbers was one of the representatives of the Modern movement in Indonesia before the Second World War. His work is characterized by its clean-cut, functionalist elevations, which often feature curved lines, and the absence of external ornamentation and other purely decorative devices. In the same period, Nationalism manifested in the quest for a new style of architecture —
International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts furnishings and paintings but these works, including the pavilions, were spare and modern. The modern architecture of Le Corbusier and Konstantin Melnikov attracted both criticism and admiration for its lack of ornamentation. Criticism focused on the 'nakedness' of these structures, compared to other pavilions at the exhibition, such as the Pavilion of the Collector by the "ébéniste"-decorator Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. In 1926, shortly after the end of the Paris Decorative Arts exposition, The French Union of Modern Artists, a group which included Francis Jourdain, Pierre Chareau, Le Corbusier, and Robert Mallet-Stevens among others, fiercely attacked the style, which they said was