Modern architecture is a set of building styles
with similar characteristics, primarily the simplification of form and the
elimination of ornament. The first variants were 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. It gained popularity after the Second
World War and became the dominant architectural style for institutional and
corporate buildings for three decades.
The modern movement in architecture and
industrial design, which emerged in the early 20th century, responded to
sweeping changes in technology and society. A new world of machines and cities
forced artists to think anew about their environment, and soon revolutionized
the way we perceive, portray, and participate in the world. Modernist ideas have
pervaded every form of design, from graphics to architecture, as well as being
a key influence on art, literature and music.
By the 1920s, modern designers began to embrace
new technologies and the possibility of mass production; the aesthetic of the
machine then became a central theme in modernism. Two figures in particular
promoted the language of industry: Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier.
Gropius was the leader of the Bauhaus, the
school of art and architecture in Germany. The Bauhaus revolutionized art
training by combining the teaching of the pure arts with the study of crafts.
Gropius aimed to unite art with technology, and he educated a new generation of
designers and architects to reject historical precedents and adopt the ideology
of modern industry. For the Bauhaus, Gropius wrote the curriculum, designed the
building, and he assembled its faculty: an extraordinary group that included
Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel
Breuer.
Le Corbusier, probably the most influential
modern architect, introduced a fascination with the designs of engineers, such
as grain silos, cruise ships, and automobiles. His radical ideas were given
full expression in his 1923 book Vers Une Architecture ("Towards a New
Architecture"), an impassioned manifesto. It is still the best-selling
architecture book of all time, and it includes Le Corbusier’s famous motto:
"A house is a machine for living in."
In the 1930s, many of the leading European
modernists emigrated to the United States; thus the theory and practice of
Modernism became widespread. The 'tradition of the new', as Richard Weston
called it, became the dominant mode of progressive artists. What had begun as a
cluster of loosely related artistic movements scattered across Europe emerged
as the dominant style of the 20th century.
