In the US, the 1960s and 70s was a time of unrivalled socio-political activism -- hippies protested against war with a message of love, the civil rights movement reached a crescendo with the death of Martin Luther King, the LGBT community celebrated the first Gay Liberation Day, and the world stood still to witness the Apollo 11 moon landing.

"The events that were happening on a local, national and regional scale arguably affected the way in which architects and designers started to approach not only for whom they were designing, but why (they were designing)," says Sean Anderson, associate curator for the department of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.