We tend to think of the decades immediately following World War II as a time of prosperity and growth, with soldiers returning home by the millions, going off to college on the G. I. Bill and lining up at the marriage bureaus.

    But when it came to their houses, it was a time of common sense and a belief that less could truly be more. During the Depression and the war, Americans had learned to live with less, and that restraint, in combination with the postwar confidence in the future, made small, efficient housing positively stylish.

    Economic condition was only a stimulus for the trend toward efficient living. The phrase “less is more” was actually first popularized by a German, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who like other people associated with the Bauhaus, a school of design, emigrated to the United States before World War II and took up posts at American architecture schools. These designers came to exert enormous influence on the course of American architecture, but none more so than Mies.

    Mies’s signature phrase means that less decoration, properly organized, has more impact than a lot. Elegance, he believed, did not derive from abundance. Like other modern architects, he employed metal, glass and laminated wood—materials that we take for granted today but that in the 1940s symbolized the future. Mies’s sophisticated presentation masked the fact that the spaces he designed were small and efficient, rather than big and often empty.

    The apartments in the elegant towers Mies built on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive, for example, were smaller—two-bedroom units under 1,000 square feet—than those in their older neighbors along the city’s Gold Coast. But they were popular because of their airy glass walls, the views they afforded and the elegance of the buildings’ details and proportions, the architectural equivalent of the abstract art so popular at the time.

    The trend toward “less” was not entirely foreign. In the 1930s Frank Lloyd Wright started building more modest and efficient houses—usually around 1,200 square feet—than the spreading two-story ones he had designed in the 1890s and the early 20th century.

    The “Case Study Houses” commissioned from talented modern architects by California Arts & Architecture magazine between 1945 and 1962 were yet another homegrown influence on the “less is more” trend. Aesthetic effect came from the landscape, new materials and forthright detailing. In his Case Study House, Ralph Rapson may have mispredicted just how the mechanical revolution would impact everyday life—few American families acquired helicopters, though most eventually got clothes dryers—but his belief that self-sufficiency was both desirable and inevitable was widely shared.

答案精析：根据题干中Paragraph 3和Bauhaus可定位至原文第三段第二句。该句指出，包豪斯是一家设计学校，后一句的these designers指的是本段第二句中的“与包豪斯相关”，移民到美国并在美国建筑学校任职的人，这些人对美国建筑exert enormous influence（产生了巨大影响），D选项中的a great influence是对此表述的同义替换，故为正确答案。

错项排除：原文提到“少即是多”的理念是由米斯提出的，并非是包豪斯学院由米斯创立，故A选项错误。原文并未提到包豪斯的设计理念，故B选项错误。原文只是提到与包豪斯有关的设计师移民美国，并非大多数美国设计师都与包豪斯有关，故C选项错误。

长难句分析：The phrase “less is more” was actually first popularized by a German, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who like other people associated with the Bauhaus, a school of design, emigrated to the United States before World War II and took up posts at American architecture schools.

本句主干为The phrase… was actually first popularized by a German，为主谓宾结构，“less is more”是phrase的同位语。the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe是German的同位语。who引导的非限制性定语从句的主干是who emigrated… and took up posts。like other people是插入语，associated with the Bauhaus是过去分词作后置定语修饰people，a school of design是Bauhaus的同位语。to the United States为地点状语，表明移民的去处，before World War II为时间状语，表明移民时间。at American architecture schools为地点状语，表明任教的学校。

句意为：“少即是多”的说法实际上最初是由一位德国建筑师路德维希·米斯·范德罗推广开来的。他和其他与德国包豪斯设计学院相关的建筑师一样，在二战前移民到美国并在美国建筑学院任教。