Modern architecture was pioneered in North America and then established in Europe before and after World War I (1914-1918). In a 1932 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, it was acclaimed as the International Style. Initially, the movement offered pure abstract forms to replace stylistic traditions inherited from Renaissance art and architecture, but gradually this purism diffused. One of the persistent ideas in 20th-century architecture is the belief that beauty can be seen in the structural properties of industrial materials such as iron, glass, and steel.

Art Nouveau first appeared in the 1890s in France. Similar tendencies were called Jugendstil in Germany and Sezessionstil in Austria. The style is characterized by openness to the use of all materials and by the uninhibited reduction of everything to free form, independent of the dictates of function. De Stijl architecture was centered in the Netherlands in the years immediately following 1919, and its geometric discipline became an ingredient of modernism.

Bauhaus is a German design school that profoundly influenced architecture and the arts. Founded in 1919 in Weimar, the Bauhaus was based on the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement that art should meet society's needs and that no distinction should exist between fine arts and practical crafts.

In the 1920s and 1930s, in France, England, and the United States, a streamlined style called art deco predominated. Early formulations of modernism were led by the work of Swiss architect Le Corbusier. After World War II (1939-1945), Le Corbusier asserted the possibilities of reinforced concrete, and various architects and engineers contributed to its widespread architectural use. Architectural development in Scandinavia featured many creative individuals, most notably Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.

Read about some of the famous architects of the Modern Era.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Le Corbusier

Ludwig  Mies Van der Rohe

In the decades following World War II, new centralized administrative facilities proliferated in cities throughout the world. Modernism, lending itself to the industrialized production and assembly of uniform elements for these huge structures, became the dominant style of public architecture. Reinforced concrete underwent continued industrial refinement, and it became possible to build high-rise buildings entirely in concrete, as exemplified by the work of Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei. Other architects sought to refine the use of industrial materials such as metal and glass, as well as to give form to innovative engineering possibilities. American architect Louis I. Kahn reconciled classical elements with the tenets of modernism.
By the early 1980s, postmodernism had become the dominant trend in American architecture and an important phenomenon in Europe as well. Its success in the United States owed much to the influence of Philip C. Johnson (as did modernism 50 years earlier). His AT&T Building (1984) in New York City immediately became a landmark of postmodern design.

After the economic recession of the 1970s, when many large building projects suffered, the 1980s saw a regurgence. In France a series of spectacular projects left a physical reminder of France's administration for posterity. In Britain, London's Docklands became the largest building site in Europe And in the United States, various imaginative schemes were launched to regenarate inner city areas and city centres.

Below are some of the buildings of the modern 20th Century.

Hongkong & Shanghai Bank
The Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, based in Hongkong, was designed by Foster associates, in 1981-1985. Foster is never architecturally incoherent and his technological bias is always classiacally handled. In this vast skyscraper, the vertebrate skeleton is boldly and effectively exposed, giving great visual and structural confidence.
 
 
Lloyds Building
Designed by Richard Rogers, this High-Tech Modern style of architecture expressed its structural and exposed services as ornamental order. Located in London, England, It uses steel frame with glass curtain wall as its construction system.
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World Trade Center
The World Trade Center in New York City was designed by Minoru Yamasaki. The construction of the building presented to Yamasaki, who was selected over a dozen other American architects, was quite explicit: twelve million square feet of floor area on a sixteen acre site, which also had to  accommodate new facilities for the Hudson tubes and subway connections—all with a budget of under $500 million. The vast space  needs and limited site immediately implied a high-rise development that makes the adjacent drama of Manhattan's business tip seem timid in comparison.
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National Center for Atmospheric Research
The National Center for Atmospheric Research is located on a small plateau at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, near Boulder, Colorado. Whereas S.O.M., in the Air Force Academy, met the tremendous scale of nature with a shimmering, reflective expanse of glass, Pei has returned to the elemental forms of sheer walls of unfinished concrete of a dark reddish-brown aggregate to match the color of the mountains. Research facilities for five hundred scientists, adjoining common-use facilities across a terraced plaza, are grouped in towers of offices and laboratories to ensure a degree of privacy for individual research groups."
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