After the Second World War, nationalist ideologies seemed out-of-date. Individual expression could not be sacrificed, as it had been; therefore, the middle of the twentieth century was defined by existentialism, a reaction to the universalism and standardization of the early Modernism. Noted architect and theorist Lebbeus Woods attributes this decline in utopian thought in architecture to the advance of democratization and capitalism. In such an environment, “ideals and idealism can only slow us down. Utopias can only get in the way” (Woods, “Utopia?”). Consider architecture; the rationalism of Mies van der Rohe was not necessarily universalist, but rather a representation of Mies' personal identity. It was simply another style (albeit one held in high regard by architects and critics), in the same way the commercially successful, Populuxe buildings of Morris Lapidus were another. Neither was absolute; with the advent of Postmodernism, the perfection of the object was beginning to be replaced by the experience of the subject. We began to value art and architecture that revealed to us who we were, rather than who we would like to be (de Botton 136). →