Abstract
The chapter aims to discuss the paradigmatic shift in the architecture at the beginning of the 20th century. According to Walter Benjamin, in the age of mechanical reproduction the work loses its aura of uniqueness, its connection to a specific given context, but, on the contrary, acquires a social dimension.
This change in approach is shown on the basis of its successful and famous examples (Fuller, Le Corbusier), as well as the more ambiguous ones, with special emphasis on the situation in the Czech Republic (Zlin, housing estates from the 1970s).