What is Mid-Century Modernism?

A new article by George Dodds argues that there is a “midcentury crisis,” because the category of Mid-Century Modern (MCM) architecture is too loosely defined.

I disagree, fully, so I figured I should write about it. In my opinion, Mid-Century Modernism is one of the easiest styles of architecture to define and identify. Here are the significant characteristics of Mid-Century Modernism, as I explain to my students. Since this is a kind of lecture, I created a slide deck:

To wrap: in Dodds’ article linked at the top, he spends a lot of time shaking his fist at the Wikipedia definition of Mid-century modern (plus, even more curiously, the Urban Dictionary). He looks to these sources because he says architectural history is “absent a dispassionate substantive third party.” This is wrong. Since 2004 the Getty Research Center has maintained the Art & Architecture Thesaurus. Here is how the Getty AAT defines Mid-Century Modernist (click image to link):

Now, the Getty AAT’s definition isn’t perfect, but it’s disconcerting to see a claim that architectural historians are simply flying blind. (We also have scholarly literature, like Alice Friedman’s, and textbooks, too!)