Institutions completed the transformation.

As displaced European architects entered universities, government agencies, corporations, professional organizations, and architectural practices, Modernist ideas became embedded in the institutions that produced the built environment.

Architecture schools taught the new language.

Professional organizations legitimized it.

Governments incorporated it into planning, infrastructure, public housing, civic buildings, and institutional construction.

Banks and developers financed it.

Corporations adopted it as an image of efficiency, progress, and technological power.

Architectural publications celebrated and reproduced it.

Building industries standardized the materials and construction systems that made it increasingly economical to repeat.

Through these institutions, Modernism became more than an architectural movement.

It became a system of architectural production.

Cultural dominance does not require architects to gather together and consciously decide that every city should look alike. Once a particular architectural worldview becomes embedded within powerful institutions, those institutions begin reproducing its assumptions.

Students learn what constitutes "good" architecture.

Planning departments determine what constitutes rational development.

Financial institutions determine what can be funded.

Developers determine what can be profitably repeated.

Governments determine what can be built at scale.

Professional culture determines what is considered progressive, sophisticated, or legitimate.

Over time, these decisions accumulate in the physical environment.