Making It Modern

"In the tennis court where the French Revolution was declared, on the Ringstrasse in Vienna, in the workshops of England, and in the grids that turned the United States into democratic landscape, space opened up. It was a new phenomenon: abstract, driven by technology and geometry, and used by a new class of the new middle class. Over time, this modernist space drove the emergence of a new style and mode of building that took its name: modernism. This lecture will trace the emergence of the space of modernism, describe its spread and refinement, and show how it has come to pervade our lives at a global level. Finally, it will ask the question of whether modern space still exists and, if so, where and how."