ABSTRACT
When Walter Gropius came to the United States in 1937 he wrote, “My intention is not to introduce a cut and dried Modern Style from Europe but rather to introduce a method of approach which allows one to tackle a problem according to its peculiar conditions.” This intent has not been realized. Concern for “a method of approach” remains in the realm of the personal rather than public knowledge and is not really part of any modern theory of design. Modern architecture is entering its third generation. Its major concern of the past 50 years has been the technology of building and its resultant form. The modern theory of architecture is a theory of immediate and material form, its emphasis a response to the great nineteenth-century advances in the production and technology of material wealth. But advances in the material advances of architecture have been at the expense of understanding the process of design and extension of design theory.
