Modernism was fueled by Louis Sullivan’s maxim "form follows function," a rallying cry for utility and simplicity. Yet it wasn’t absolute: Art Deco architects like Auguste Perret and Henri Sauvage mixed clean modern geometry with selective ornament, proving design can balance innovation and elegance. They let proportion, rhythm, and new materials—especially reinforced concrete—do the heavy lifting.
After the First World War, architecture as a conceptual field split. Many defended neo-classical and Beaux-Arts traditions, while others pushed for a radical break. Modernists—Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet-Stevens in France, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Germany, and Konstantin Melnikov in the Soviet Union—argued for clarity of form and the elimination of ornament.