1932

1932 was a landmark year in architectural history, most notably marked by the seminal International Style exhibition curated by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which codified and promoted the formal characteristics of European modernism — flat roofs, open plans, and an absence of ornament — to an American audience and helped establish modernism as the dominant architectural language of the twentieth century. The year also coincided with the deep economic depression of the early 1930s, which curtailed construction activity worldwide and gave architects time to theorize, write, and debate the future of the discipline. Within the broader sweep of 20th-century architecture, 1932 stands as a defining moment in the institutionalization of modernism and the global dissemination of a new architectural language that would reshape cities and buildings for generations to come.