stripped down aesthetic of the Modern Movement.

But Modernism had strong roots on the other side of the Atlantic, where America’s greatest architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, had begun to revolutionize the structure of the house itself

Wrights Prairie Houses, designed between 1894 and 1910 for wealthy Chicago suburbanites were startling and influential departure, with their long low profile, rooms running into each other, terraces merging with gardens and projecting roofs. These elements of his work word be taken further by his European followers, but Wright was never to confine himself to what become the Modernist aesthetic.

The movement that was to become known in the 1930’s as the international Style really come fully into being after WWI, both in the United States and Europe. In America two young Viennese architects, Rudolf Schindler and Richard Nuetra, who had both been briefly employed by Wright in Chicago and then Los Angeles, were among the first to integrate revolutionary architectural ideas from Europe with Wrights notions of the modern to create some of the most exciting private housing of the first three decades of the century.

American Modernism, however, was to remain the softer face of the new movement. The sunny West Coast, untroubled by the devastation of WWI, had the freedom to interpret Modernism

as a technically and aesthetically innovative style, but it was a style that would continue to be, for the time being at least, the preserve of the indulged, if enlightened, rich.

Postwar European architects viewed their role somewhat differently. Profoundly affected by the devastation of the war they had just experienced, they wished to create a new world in all forms of art and design. And it was here, in Europe, that the early work of three outstanding architects - Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier- would lay the foundations of Modernism’s worldwide influence.

While the giants of early Modernist architecture on the continent were exploring their own