Thank you!!  

Vulgar Modernism Pt. 4
In a way, it was lucky for modernist architecture and design to be eclipsed by postmodernism and other -isms, so long as a corps of devoted craftspersons kept the modernist movement alive in a manner consistent with the basic form language and precepts of modernist design. It was okay that innovation and flowering slowed down, because so long as it was not vulgarized, the modern movement could live to reascend the stage when it had slowly, steadily amassed a new critical mass of evolved ideas and purpose that coincided with a spike in consumer preference for the virtues of modern design.
What modernist design adherents should rightly be concerned about is precisely the vulgarization of modernism, or perhaps more accurately neomodernism, itself, that Koen alluded to.
Modernism can survive without stars for a few decades. It can survive not being center stage every few decades.
What it probably can't survive is unbridled, cannabalizing vulgarization.

Modernism vs the MacMansion
Let me see if I grok this on something dear to my heart, the American home. In the last 30 or so years there has been a proliferation of what has become colloquially called the "MacMansion" (see pic below)

When I was a child new homes in suburbia were a mix of styles and included a fair percent of "modern" homes. Tri levels, split levels, sloping roofs and assorted motifs first seen in the 30's but popularized after WWll and spread en masse by Eichlers and such. These are the homes where I first started to love architecture.
Since the 70's they have all but dissappeared as a part of the of American home design. Every 4br 3 1/2 ba home here in the US that's built on spec by a developer (as opposed to an individual custom home) looks pretty much like a subcategory of the example above. The neo-pseudo-colonial, neo-pseudo-hacienda, neo-pseudo-classical, etc etc etc.

Part of what you say is "don't despair" cause this appalling trend has given modernism a much needed break and when it revives in popularity it will hopefully be new and fresh?
I just hope I'm still alive...

James, that's it in a nutshell...Pt.1
but the problem of course is that my take is essentially a detached, objective "ecological" overview. It assumes that these processes, like evolution in natural communities, occurs on timelines that basically have nothing to do with the timelines of individuals and so is often no solution at all to an individual designer's or an individual consumers particular problems and circumstance. I set it forth as a lens through which to view and understand the macro processes at play, not to justify or approve of them, or to say that we should all be sanguine about them. Choices made in real estate infrastructure can haunt us for centuries. Choices made in land uses at the ends of the infrastructure links can haunt us for decades. I am not a social darwinist. I do not believe the duty of a human being is to sit by and say oh, what the hell, let the developers destroy a neighborhood for a development fee, or the land planners destroy a neighborhood for the greater glory of advancing one of their latest "isms". To understand is not to condone. To understand is to begin to find fitting ways to resist the destructive path and seek out the constructive path. Whether you're designing a web site, or a regional multiuse land plan, or a set of dishes, when you design you get a chance to connect up with the legacy and push it down a path toward more humanity, not less.

James, that's it in a nutshell Pt.2
Each design is part of a msssive tapestry complex beyond what any of us can understand in tightly controllable details and ways. But we know from information theory and the study of artificial intelligence that there really is such a thing as bottom up organization of intelligence. And we know that if we honestly and openly ask lots of persons to change their morals (or more often simply to live by the ones they profess) and preferences of persons that the zillions of choices they make slowly, inexorably cause the tapestry to change. And we know that once this change becomes recognizable, that the command and control bureaucracy in public and private sectors jumps on this and begins to rewrite regulation and subsidy and ownership interests in order to rationalize it across a broader scale.
This really is how it works. Things really can be changed. The bad guys do it all the time, because they have their hands on the levers so much of the time and they spend so much of the publics money on trying to condition the public into artificially narrow paths of change. But because the bad guys are successful in pursuing their ends, we know the broader community can be just as successful in changing the system. Why do you think so much money is spent on propaganda and military power and security infrastructure and de-regulation of progressive reform? It is because the system is SOOOOOO mutable and much of that change is SOOOOOO lasting once it is committed.
The hard part of all of this is that change does not occur when I, or you want it to, and it does not occur the way I, or you want it to. It is devastating to get to a time of life when your knowledge reveals just how much could be done, AND how little is being done. It is devastating to realize that I, or you, really probably won't live to see what we hope to see. And the bad guys fan this realization and bank on its paralysing, or cynicalizing effects on the parts of many, many people, especially on the engineer/designers in so many fields. If you become cynical and design only what they want for their money, what could be better for them?