Modern architects acted against the architecture of the 19th century, which they considered it had too heavily from the past. They felt this architecture either severely bound to past styles or cloyingly picturesque and eclectic. As the 20th century started they considered it was necessary to invent an architecture that expressed the spirit of a new age and would surpass the styles, materials, and technologies of earlier architecture. This unifying purpose did not mean that their buildings would be similar in appearance, nor that architects would agree on other issues.

The aesthetics of modern architects contrasted radically. Some architects, rapt by the powerful machines developed in the late 19th century, sought to create an architecture that conveyed the sleekness and energy of a machine. Their aesthetic celebrated function in all forms of design, from household furnishings to massive ocean liners and the new flying machines. Other architects, however, found machine-like elegance inappropriate to architecture. They preferred an architecture that expressed, not the rationality of the machine, but the mystic powers of human emotion and spirit.

The Modern architects also contrasted in their understanding of historical traditions. While some abandoned historical references altogether, others used careful references to the past to enhance the modernity of their designs. Italian architect Antonio Sant'Elia resoundingly rejected traditional architecture in his Futurist Manifesto of 1914. He called for each generation to build its houses anew and celebrated glass, steel, and concrete as the materials to make this possible. The modern designs of his countryman Giuseppe Terragni, on the other hand, referred explicitly to the past. Terragni's Casa del Fascio (Fascist Party Headquarters, 1932-1936) in Como, Italy, featured an inner atrium for public assembly inspired by the courtyards of Italian Renaissance palaces, and windows laid out according to ancient Greek and Roman theories of ideal architectural proportions. Terragni saw tradition as providing ideal building blocks for a new architecture. But the building's concrete and steel construction and its sleek, unornamented form expressed a thoroughly modern aesthetic.

The modern architecture also confronted traditional ideas about the types of structures suitable for architectural design. Important civic buildings, aristocratic palaces, churches, and public institutions had long been the mainstay of architectural practices, but modernist designers argued that architects should design all that was necessary for society, even the most humble buildings. They started to plan low-cost housing, railroad stations, factories, warehouses, and commercial spaces. In the first half of the 20th century many modernists produced housing as well as furniture, textiles, and wallpaper to create a totally designed domestic environment.

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