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      Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, which dates from the sixteenth century, feels thoroughly contemporary in its simplicity of manufacturing, transparency and expression, and has influenced many modernist architects.

      By the mid-twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were presiding over a rebirth of architecture, and a rediscovery of the unadorned and rational simplicity of Japanese building, reinvented for the age of machines. Their styles were different; Wright’s naturalism contrasted with the more classical approaches pioneered by Mies and Corb. Inspired by modern manufacturing techniques, they saw houses in minimalist, functional terms, as ‘machines for living’; form should follow function; distracting ornamentation and historical cherry-picking should be outlawed; materials should be true to themselves; natural light, air and health should be celebrated.

      Whole cities could be remodelled to replace urban squalor with rational blocks and street layouts. Le Corbusier’s 1925 Plan Voisin proposed demolishing central Paris north of the Seine, replacing it with a grid of cruciform skyscrapers, connected by raised walkways separating pedestrians from cars, and topped with roof gardens. The idea was to bring the same rigour and scientific thinking to architecture that Lister and Pasteur had brought to medicine.

      The tone of early modernism is uncompromising, but if you are a pioneer, you have to be uncompromising. Architects such as Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus wanted to rethink not just the shape of buildings, but the way we would live in the machine age. The Bauhaus took a total view of modern life, bringing together architects, artists, interior designers and craft workers. They felt the need to wipe the slate clean, to enable a fresh start after an orgy of decorative excess at the turn of the twentieth century. Since most critics at the time felt that what the modernist pioneers were doing was trash, should be outlawed and replaced by neoclassical and neo-Gothic pastiche, there was no space for compromise. You sometimes have to lean into the wind to make progress.

      There were other currents of the modern movement too. Alongside Frank Lloyd Wright, other Chicago architects were using the steel frame, the telephone and the elevator to enable building at previously unheard of heights. In northern Europe, a Nordic modernism was developed by Alvar Aalto – more contextual, more humane, not immune to acknowledging history and the vernacular.

      Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation, built in Marseille, 1947 – 1952.

      The flat roof is a public space, with a running track and a paddling pool for children.

      The building still expresses early modernism’s confidence in the value of daylight and fresh air.

      The building is constructed from raw concrete – the béton brut that gives brutalism its name – but has brightly coloured balconies, with well-proportioned rooms, and shops, clinics and restaurants on site.

      

      A dialogue between Mediterranean and Nordic modernism can be seen in the London County Council-designed Alton Estate, in Roehampton in southwest London. One of the triumphs of post-war housing, the concrete Corbusian towers of Alton East contrast with the brick-built Alton West.

      Aalto’s cool northern-European contextualism was tinged with elements of the Arts and Crafts movement; Le Corbusier offered harsher lines, cubist forms and brighter Mediterranean colours. As an Italian, albeit one transplanted to England at an early age, I knew where my instinctive sympathies lay – with buildings like Corb’s Villa Savoye, Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre and Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion. Hitch-hiking to Italy every summer, I would usually sleep under the stars. On one trip, I took a detour to see Corb’s socially and architecturally radical Unité d’Habitation in Marseille. Night fell, and I gave up my search and instead found a field to sleep in. I woke up to see the building itself looming over me, with its residents peering curiously down at me from their windows and balconies. A few years later, I met Charlotte Perriand, the designer who worked closely with Corb on many of his interiors, at Jean Prouvé’s studio; when I expressed interest in their work together, she insisted on taking me in her car to visit the nearby Priory of Sainte Marie de la Tourette.

      Jean Prouvé with Charlotte Perriand, who designed interiors and furniture with Pierre Jeanneret and Le Corbusier (and once gave me a guided tour of Corb’s Priory of Sainte-Marie de La Tourette near Lyon).

      Mies van der Rohe’s buildings were tightly controlled, complete works of art, which expressed their structure, but also took incredible care over scale and harmony. Nothing could be added or taken away. My good friend Peter Palumbo, who acquired Mies’ Farnsworth House in Illinois in 1972, once invited me to spend a night there together with my son Roo. I will never forget the magic of sleeping next to Roo in this perfectly realised jewel, barely able to close my eyes in my excitement, both of us marvelling at the poise and precision of the building, and the dialogue it establishes with the wild fields that surround it.

      These mid-century modernists carved toeholds in the ice and showed a path, but did not complete the journey – Le Corbusier acknowledges as much in the title of his best-known work, Vers Une Architecture (75 years later, this title must have influenced the title of the Urban Task Force’s report, Towards an Urban Renaissance, produced under my chairmanship). My generation of architects, and the generation who taught me at the AA and elsewhere, used these toeholds to explore new pathways. We wanted a new architectural language that could flourish and add impetus to modernism, without being stifled or drowned out by this forceful collection of architectural and intellectual revolutionaries.

      Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s exquisite Farnsworth House, built in Plano, Illinois, in 1951. The house is unequalled in its lightness, transparency and simplicity, seeming to float above the ground. The night I spent there is one of my most magical architectural experiences.

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