““Trads”—supporters of traditional forms—claim that modern architecture is foisted on the public by a willful avant-garde. Yet the Art Deco Empire State Building and Maya Lin’s raw Vietnam Veterans Memorial have become two of the country’s most beloved designs. In fact, the style war being waged on the right is rooted in a misconception. Most American architects today work in a mode you could loosely call modernist, but not as a matter of ideology. It’s simply an efficient approach to creating buildings such as high-rises and hospitals with sophisticated modern needs, using contemporary materials and technologies.”