MODERN 1930 Bauhaus to International Style.

Modernism Architectural Modernism embraces a multitude of 20th-century movements that share stylistic and technical characteristics, such as abstraction, mass production, industrialization, scientific rationalisation, universalisation, rejection of tradition and a general belief in 'form follows function'. In the 1920S, a number of avant-garde movements invented new ways of building for the machine age that sought to use technology to improve everybody's everyday life. Italian Rationalism developed an undecorated and logical but classical modern architecture, Russian Constructivism aimed to unite art and life through an expression of architectural elements, Dutch de Stijl and French Purism strove to transpose Cubist painting to architecture. The German Bauhaus sought to marry industrial production with good design.

Modern architecture became known in the USA as International Style after a 1932 exhibition showing the new European architecture It attained almost universal acceptance for postwar reconstruction due to its speed, scale and relative inexpensiveness, and remains the dominant design idiom. Its most influential protagonist was arguably Le Corbusier, whose writings, ideas, and buildings - key among them the Villa Savoye, Paris (1931), various Unites d'Habitation housing blocks and the city of Chandigarh, India (1959) have influenced generations of architects. Modernism is the cultural and artistic manifestation of modernity, and it dominated 20th-century thought, promoting progress towards a better future through scientific rationalisation.

‘Modern' should not be confused with 'contemporary' architecture - Modernism is a set of ideas and world views that reject history and are associated with progress. It is a moot point whether Modernism has been replaced or merely extended by Postmodernism. The motif that arguably exemplifies modern architecture as a style and simultaneously exposes its contradictions is the flat roof, which completely fails in terms of form following function. BIOGRAPHIES: LE CORBUSIER Swiss-born architect most closely associated with and influential on Modernism WALTER GROPIUS German-born architect and founder of the Bauhaus, who later worked in the USA