Northwestern National Life Building / Minoru Yamasaki. Image © w_lemay via Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Modernism in architecture was perhaps the first truly global building design philosophy. Established at the beginning of the twentieth century, its early proponents were heavyweights from Europe, such as Le Corbusier , Walter Gropius , and Mies van der Rohe . In 1923, Le Corbusier published his seminal written work, usually translated into English as Towards a New Architecture . Newness, and a rejection of history, was one of the central tenets of modernism. This manifested itself in the use of new materials such as steel and concrete , which gave rise to an unprecedented freedom of formal expression. By the middle of the twentieth century, Modernism was adopted across the world by countries recovering from the Second World War and overcoming the legacy of colonialism.…