ABSTRACT
Modernity springs from a questioning attitude toward existence in which humanity views itself in doubt. The earliest artists to address the uncertain place of 'Man' in the cosmos, artists as varied as Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, were modern before Modernism was a thing. Modernity pushed to its limits aims to create works that are unclassifiable, irreducible or, quite literally, unthinkable. While not all contemporary architects are modern in this sense, this thought process is evident in the work of a significant number of practitioners who might be termed Modernists, Postmodernists and Post-postmodernists. Architects' self-imagining often eschews historical weight and its determinism, perhaps more strongly than 'progenitors' of other design disciplines. Architects and other designers under the sway of professionalization are alienated from the design process and their resultant creations in direct proportion to the extent to which they believe themselves to exist in a meta-time in relation to their work.
