In most fields of intellectual activity, twentieth-century Europe has proudly asserted its independence of the past. As early as the eighteenth century, the word “modern” acquired something of the ring of a war cry, but then only as an antithesis of “ancient”—implying contrast with classical antiquity. In the last one hundred years, however, “modern” has come to distinguish our perception of our lives and times from all that has gone before, from history as a whole, as such. Modern architecture,