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| December 19, 2007
Modern architecture, not to be confused with 'contemporary architecture', is a term given to a number of building styles with similar characteristics, primarily the simplification of form and the elimination of ornament. The style was conceived early in the 20th century. Modern Architecture was adopted by many influential architects and architectural educators, however very few "Modern buildings" were built in the first half of the century.
An early use of the term in print, was in the title of a book by Otto Wagner. It gained popularity after the Second World War and became the dominant architectural style for institutional and corporate buildings for three decades.
Main figures consist of Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius in Germany. Frank Lloyd Wright's career parallels and influences the work of the European modernists, particularly via the Wasmuth Portfolio, but he refused to be categorized with them. In 1932 came the important MOMA exhibition, the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture, curated by Philip Johnson. Johnson and collaborator Henry-Russell Hitchcock drew together many distinct threads and trends, identified them as stylistically similar and having a common purpose, and consolidated them into the International Style.
This was an important turning point. With World War II the important figures of the Bauhaus fled to the United States, to Chicago, to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and to Black Mountain College. While Modern architectural design never became a dominant style in single-dwelling residential buildings, in institutional and commercial architecture Modernism became the pre-eminent, and in the schools (for leaders of the profession) the only acceptable, design solution from about 1932 to about 1984.
Perhaps its most famous manifestations include the United Nations headquarters (Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Sir Howard Robertson), the Seagram Building (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe), and Lever House (Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill), all in New York. A prominent residential example is the Lovell House (Richard Neutra) in Los Angeles.
Link: Good Overview of Moderism
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