The Mantra of Modernity

Abstract

Modern Architecture and Urbanism are the concrete results of a series of urban and design experiments that, during the first and second industrial revolution took place in Western and Eastern European countries and came to define the practices of the world of construction, prefabrication and design in the context of full industrialization. Five words could be identified that describe the methods and the processes underlying modern urban design, building a Mantra of Modern Architecture still in vogue: Technocracy, Hygienism, Formal Reduction, Cost-effectiveness and Communitarianism. This paper aims at analysing and clarifying how the Mantra of Modernism has been applied in non-European settlement and how it can constitute the conceptual base towards the construction of an alternative contemporary modernity.