The transfer of the center of the architectural culture from Europe to America within a general translatio imperii will completely modify the social orientation of the Modern Movement and transform it into a politically deactivated style that would be preferably called Fordist Modernism. The layers of this transformation are diverse and convergent: the attempt of integration within, and the later flight from totalitarian regimes by the great ideologues of the modern; their selection and assimilation to the culture of American private initiative; and finally, the unquestionable triumph of the ideology of consumption and its alignment with the new and aestheticized style will gradually complete this diametral change in the history of twentieth-century architecture. The second part of the century can't be understood but through the filter of this veiled but radical transformation.
