A Cruel Irony in the History of Architectural Modernism

Monument to Karl Liebkneckt and Rosa Luxemburg (1925)

It is a cruel irony in the history of architectural modernism that the Mies van der Rohe, who earlier in his career designed the monument to the fallen Communist heroes Karl Liebkneckt and Rosa Luxemburg, would (thirty years later) be the same man who designed the Seagram Building, one of the swankiest monuments to high-Fordist capitalism.  This may have been pointed out before, but it stands as a testament to the tragedy of architectural modernism in the twentieth century.

The Seagram Building (1958)