After Kew Gardens I had the pleasure of visiting the Victoria & Albert Museum before the group tea. There was an exhibit on the design and legacy of ocean liners. As a child I was enthralled with the ocean liner and partaking in this exhibit was worth every pence. It was fascinating to see the correlation between the interior of these floating palaces with the architecture of their time. For example, the SS Normandie of the French Line was perhaps the greatest passenger ship ever built. Constructed at the height of the Art Deco era its interior layout and decor were crafted specifically to feel like a ship, not like a hotel as previous ships had. Along with that, her deck plans were organized exactly like a 12 story skyscraper; with public and private spaces with proper circulation oriented around utilities in order to hide these maintenance aspects from the naked eye of every passenger to keep the clean sleek and streamlined look of the Art Deco age(as seen in the poster I cannot express my fortune for happening upon this exhibit here in Londontown, and though I gave up my dreams of being a commercial naval engineer after my childhood, after this walk down memory lane I realized my area of study now in architecture is not too far off from where my aspirations once laid.
