Where and when did modern architecture begin?

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.