When discussing what topic we wanted to win with this year, many options

crossed our minds. We met numerous times over the summer to reflect on what had
provoked our intellectualism throughout our high school career. However, in relation to
the theme of Exploration, Encounter, and Exchange, we came to a unanimous decision
that the most unique of our multitude of ideas would be best. This idea ended up being
the relationship between history and architecture, and how the social issues and values
of a time period can be so beautifully represented in its architecture. Intuitively it made
sense that this relationship existed, however, as historians, we wanted the facts and
details to prove it. This topic was also related to our previous year of study in IB History
of the Americas, so it seemed fitting.
We knew that this would involve extensive research, and so we prepared as early
as possible. We used the databases on our school website and scholarly journal articles
(many located on jstor) for most of our historical context, and for the relationship
between history and architecture, we relied primarily on books, photographs from the
internet, and personal photographs (since we live so close to these historical structures).
It was quite exciting. Most of our research was conducted before the creation of our
website, however, as we moved along in the process, it was necessary to return to the
research process in order to clarify and elaborate on some of our main points.
We chose to design a website because all our previous projects that were websites
won. Clearly, there is something to be said about patterns that repeat over time, so we
continued the trend. We are also very familiar with the formatting and thoroughly enjoy
the ability to use primary sources, videos, images, and other sources of media within the
website. It is the most flexible of the presentations and lends itself nicely to an organized
layout of analysis and evidence. We divided our website into five sections. The first was

the thesis, which being one of the most important aspects of our project needed its own
tab. We then included Context, Exploration, Encounter, and Exchange. It seemed
appropriate for the theme and we were able to organize our ideas clearly with this
template.
Our project connects to the theme of Exploration, Encounter, and Exchange
rather harmoniously. We chose to explore Modernism in the 1920s and how it was
reflected in the architecture of the time period. The exploration of modernism in the
1920s resulted in a historic encounter in American society with two responses to this
new concept: traditionalism, which favored a return to normalcy and was hesitant to
change, and modernism, which clearly embraced the new liberal ideas and reforms to
the norm. The exchange occurred between the architecture and the ideologies. These
opposing responses to modernism were reflected in and permanently exchanged
with/infused in the two styles architecture of the time period: Colonial Revival and Art
Deco.

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