This book grew out of a puzzlement I felt when studying the ideas embodied in mod-
ern architecture. My perplexity had to do with the inadequacy of the concept of
modernity that was operative in the modern movement. To my eyes—trained as they
were by the study of critical theories such as those of Walter Benjamin or Theodor
Adorno—the concept of modernity I found in the work of Sigfried Giedion or in the
periodical Das Neue Frankfurtseemed rather naive and unbalanced. I was puzzled by
the gap between the discourse of the modern movement on the one hand and cul-
tural theories of modernity such as those of the Frankfurt School on the other. If one
realizes for instance that Ernst May (the architect behind Das Neue Frankfurt) and
Theodor Adorno were both working in the same city during the same period (Frank-
furt in the late 1920s), it seems rather strange that there are no traces of any intel-
lectual exchange between them.Introduction