Rebuilding Babel : modern architecture and internationalism Much of modernist architecture was inspired by the emergence of internationalism: the ethics and politics of world peace justice and unity through global collaboration. Mark Crinson here shows how the ideals represented by the Tower of Babel built so the story goes by people united by one language were effectively adapted by internationalist architecture its styles and practices in the modern period. Focusing particularly on the points of convergence between modernist and internationalist trends in the 1920s and again in the immediate post war years he underlines how such architecture utilised the themes of a cooperative community of builders and a common language of forms.The International Style was one manifestation of this new way of thinking but Crinson shows how the aims of modernist architecture frequently engaged with the substance of an internationalist mindset in addition to sharing surface similarities. Bringing together the visionaries of internationalist projects including Le Corbusier Bruno Taut Berthold Lubetkin Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe Crinson interweaves ideas of evolution ecology utopia regionalism socialism free trade and anti colonialism to reveal the possibilities heralded by modernist architecture