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 immediately following the Exposition, the art and design shown there was copied around the world, in the skyscrapers of New York, the ocean liners that crossed that Atlantic, movie theaters around the world. It had a major influence in the design of fashion, jewelry, furniture, glass, metalwork, textiles and other decorative arts. At the same time, it displayed the growing difference between the traditional style moderne, with its expensive materials, fine craftsmanship and lavish decoration, and the modernist movement that wanted to simplify art and architecture. The "Esprit Nouveau" pavilion and the Soviet pavilion were distinctly not decorative, they contained