With all respect, let’s stop the madness of ‘Flat Design’ as something that ‘started’ in the web just a couple years back, this is ludicrous. Modern minimalism started really in 1919, and developed through the mid-1920's and has been with us as you mentioned for almost 100 years. Not only architects, but artists and the first recognized graphic designers were part of the Bauhaus school, like Kandinsky, which inspired some of the most amazing minimal designers of our days in the 1950's and 1960's. Whoever that coined and kept using the term ‘flat design’ lack the knowledge of the Swiss Style School, and ‘clean’ design. Just visit the works of Dieter Rams, check his icons and visual representations. And let’s not forget the immense contributions of Paul Rand, Massimo Vignelli, Max Miedinger, and others. It seems to me that as many web designers or new graphic designers are getting to be known, they’re forgetting to do research on principles and graphic understanding of great masters of minimalism.