By 1995, the lasting influence of The International Style was not only well-established, it was repeated in the 1988 Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition by none other than Philip Johnson (with Mark Wigley). Each exhibition and companion publication aimed to define a style that captured the zeitgeist by focusing on form and appearance. Johnson and Hitchcock defined three traits of what they called the "international style" but what is commonly known just as "modern architecture": Architecture as Volume, rather than architecture as mass, arising from steel framing; Concerning Regularity, on the articulation of windows in exterior walls free from the role of structural support; and The Avoidance of Applied Decoration, a self-explanatory phrase. These are important aspects of what Gropius and other European architects were doing in the 1920s and 30s, but there was more to their buildings than just structure and surface. No matter, as MoMA's traits would come to define modern architecture and supplant any deeper concerns for the social repercussions that arose from the conflicts, technological changes, and economic shifts that dramatically changed the world a century ago.
Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903–1987), architectural historian, was Sophia Smith Professor of Art at Smith College and author of many works on architects and architecture. Philip Johnson (1906-2005) was a Trustee of the Museum of Modern Art, and a fellow of both The American Institute of Architects and The American Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1978 he received the Gold Medal from the AIA, and in 1979 the first Pritzker Architecture Prize.