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From Wikipedia Commons: The Temple of Athena Nike (Werner Carl-Friedrich, 1877)

The story goes that academics and other intellectuals suffered a deep crisis of identity and values in the wake of WWI. The horrors had exposed the destructive potential of industrialized modernity and shattered old certainties. This acknowledgement bred widespread self-contempt, prompting critical reassessment of Western civilization, especially its traditional aesthetics and cultural norms.

Supposedly, the collective trauma instilled a disillusionment with classical forms, ornamentation, and historicist architecture that symbolized the old order — seen as complicit in the social and political failures leading to war.

In the interwar period, a self-critical spirit fueled avant-garde architectural movements — side by side with revolutionary mass movements such as Communism and National Socialism — aimed at reshaping society and the individual. The idea was that new forms of architecture would create new ways of living, thinking, and interacting — essentially creating a utopian new world.

With their emphasis on functionality, simplicity, rationality, and universality, modernism and the International Style became emblematic of this revolution. Architecture refused to remain pure art or decoration — “beauty for its own sake”, as it were. Ideologically inflated, it had to serve a higher purpose to be worthy of existence; it was to make itself available as a tool for “social engineering” and “progress”. In this spirit, both Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) and Le Corbusier (1887–1965) sought to reshape man himself by providing living environments that would foster new social behaviors, healthier lifestyles, and a break from the ethical-aesthetic “chaos” of the past.

Throughout the history of Western architecture, classical forms have repeatedly emerged as an embodiment of humanity’s highest aspirations — order, beauty, and harmony. Rooted in the Renaissance exploration of Greco-Roman models, the classical tradition finds one of its most influential figures in Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), whose architectural principles set a standard for proportion, symmetry, and monumentality. The Palladian style became a cornerstone of Western architectural heritage, symbolizing civilization’s belief in........

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