Modernism in Europe coincided with the rise of experts to new social relevance. The ascent of experts built on a deep ‘technification’ of European societies and translated into new roles these experts played as agents of social change. Against this background certain experts attained the role of what we term ‘technocelebrities’ (TC), celebritized embodiments of technological change translated into social progress. The project focuses on two modernist architects, Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and Walter Gropius (1883-1969), who are particularly clear illustrations of this phenomenon. In the period under scrutiny, the 1920s until the 1960s, both acquired great public standing – in terms of attention and identification reminiscent of the stars of show business. At the same time these TCs turned into focal points of future-oriented public projections of far-reaching social and political transformations linked to ‘public technologies’ in the broadest sense, i.e. (future) technologies triggering the public imaginary, shaping a discursive space and providing a discursive anchor. In order to adequately understand the interaction between experts and society in the 20th century, this project argues, the history of experts has to be coalesced with the history of mass media, still a significant gap in existing scholarship. Studying Le Corbusier and Gropius as TCs situates the project at the intersection of recent trends in media history and the history of expertise. A crucial aspect of (personalized) mediatization is captured in the concept of celebritization, which we employ to study the interaction between famed architects, society and politics.

In collaboration with Véronique Boone. Image (c) Fondation Le Corbusier.