particular visions in the 20’s, the new style had only the slightest influence in Britain. But by the mid 1930’s Britain had become one of the few countries where, for political reasons, Modern architects could practice at all, and London was the first stop for many architects fleeing the rise of National Socialism in Germany.

Modernism ran to a different timetable in the United States. The Modern Movement- as a coherently expressed idea- was introduced to America in a exhibition at the museum of Modern Art in New York in 1932, entitled “ Modern Architecture; International Exhibition”.

But Modernism was never to have the same resonance in the States as it had in Europe. In

Europe, it was part of a cultural and artistic revolution. Often deeply interwoven with political principles. On the other side of the Atlantic, it continued to operate free of political overtones, liberating both its European exponents and its native practitioners.

Ironically Frank Lloyd Wright was not one of Modernism’s champions. From the 20’s onward, he had gone more of his own way with one exception in his work, Fallingwater in Bear Run Pennsylvania, whose concrete core, timber, steel and glass and its cantilevered balconies is formally with in the Modernists aesthetic.

In the mid 40’s George Nelson was co –managing editor of Architectural Forum and a

significant figure in American Modernism. In 1945 he and his fellow editor produced a seminal book Tomorrows House. But it was in the new profession of industrial design that Nelson made his most enduring impart. In 1946 he began a long association with the United States most prestigious furniture company, Herman Miller.

Modernism continued to flourish independently, above all in John Entenza’s Case Study Program. In 1937 Entenza purchased an obscure magazine and renamed it Arts and Architecture. Between 1945 and 1962 he used the magazine to showcase a series of experimental houses designed by some of California’s leading architects including Richard