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Moreover, the book avoided the lie of a rootless Modernism by exploring the ways in which key architects transformed lessons from the past. The approach deliberately balanced the formal, the functional, the ideological and the symbolic. Above all, I avoided ‘movements’ by concentrating on architecture of high intensity and long-term quality, using lenses of several focal lengths to reveal underlying meanings and thought processes, as well as lines of ensuing influence. Already in the first edition I rejected the idea of a unified ‘Modernism’ and a so-called ‘International Style’, in favour of the idea of an unfolding modern tradition with diverse strands and positions: from the ‘idealism’ of Corb and Mies van der Rohe to the ‘Functionalism’ of Hannes Meyer to the obsession with ‘nature’ in the work of Lloyd Wright, Aalto and Utzon. Moneo’s ‘critique’ of the myth of a monolithic ‘Modern Movement’ could have come straight from the Preface and Introduction of my book written nearly 40 years ago. Nothing could be further from the truth in my case. But he then lumped together a range of later histories including my own Modern Architecture since 1900 (Phaidon, first edition 1982 fully revised third edition, 1996), accusing them of propounding a unitary myth of ‘Modernism’. He rightly pointed out that early chroniclers such as Sigfried Giedion relied on a determinist idea of history and a simplistic notion of zeitgeist, expressing itself directly in a limited selection of modern buildings and spatial concepts from the heroic years of the 1920s. In his First Annual Soane Lecture, delivered last November on his acceptance of the first Sir John Soane Medal ( AR December/January 2017), he risked straying into territories where he is not really at ease, such as the historiography of modern architecture. Rafael Moneo is among the more learned of architects, but his texts don’t always clarify their subjects.

The idea of a unified ‘Modernism’ is indeed a myth: William JR Curtis responds to Rafael Moneo’s Soane Lecture