Through four books on architecture and the visions of form championed by their authors, this article aims at a heterodox, inclusive and complex mode of seeing modern form: the open discourse. Defended by few architects at this date, this approach radically differed from the familiar stylistic or iconographic one. Through it, form no longer had to adapt to the invariably pre-established codes of the so-called "modern style" and rather emerged from the specific reality of each architectural project, which is precisely where its modernity lies. The four books are: Der moderne Zweckbau (1923) by Adolf Behne; Die Neue Baukunst (1929) by Bruno Taut; Der Sieg Des Neuen Baustils (1927) by Walter Curt Behrendt; and Gli elementi dell'architettura funzionale (1932) by Alberto Sartoris.