The owners benefit from the presence in southwestern Michigan of furniture manufacturers like Herman Miller, whose pieces have become modernist icons.

We see this as a modernist icon.

The November auctions feature modernist icons from both sides of the Atlantic.

Those of us who appreciate Mr. Rudolph's role in shaping American architecture long for the day when his modernist icon will be brought back to its original complexity and sophistication.

It's a reaction to what came before - the modernist abstract icon.

The smooth tapered sides of Gio Ponti's modernist icon form the shape of a diamond, his oft-used graphic trademark.

But there is a more general reason that goes beyond the specific qualities of these two houses as modernist icons, and that has to do with the vagaries of taste.

Its name, if not its height, is meant to evoke his Glass House, a low-slung modernist icon in New Canaan, Conn.

Manser's new house was revered as a modernist icon and featured in dozens of design journals around the world.

"To me, they're as good as Le Corbusier cube chairs," he asserts, referring to the pricey tubular steel chairs with boxy leather cushions that are a modernist icon.