Clean lines, absence of decoration, avoidance of clutter, simplicity, and above all functionality – these are the characteristics of modernist architecture that were encapsulated in the phrase ‘less is more’. Although originally coined in Robert Browning’s poem Andrea del Sarto, ‘less is more’ is more often associated with the modernist architect Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, famous for his clean-lined glass and steel tower blocks in Chicago and New York City. But it was another architec...