Twentieth-Century Architecture and Modernity: Our Past, Our Present

Against the theory that the 20th century connected the objective of modernity to that of the Modern Movement, this book deals with the theme of a present continuity by revealing those "open visions" that characterized modernity at the end of the 19th century. By critically reviewing the main stages of development over time--as well as the intense debates of architectural historians, architects, and contemporary scholars--through the thesis of modernity as tradition, research, and criticism, a concept of contradiction is supported. Further echoed by that of "architecture tout court," enhancing the present environment in its current fragility of views--even more so today with the appearance of a virus capable of undermining our way of living. These are "contemporary modernisms" aimed at recovering the essence of a recent past to project it into the present, restoring to architecture that long-neglected role of critical construction and formation of society in an era, ultimately defined as "of Rembrandt beauty."