US Modernist Radio - Architecture You Love: Recent Episodes
USModernist Radio
Join Mr. Modernism George Smart and crew as they talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate Modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world. USModernist Radio is backed by the nonprofit educational archive USModernist, the largest open digital archive for Modernist residential architecture in America. www.usmodernist.org
Christopher Hawthorne spent fourteen years as the L.A. Times' architecture critic before becoming Los Angeles's first-ever Chief Design Officer. Chris Freeland runs Library Services at the Internet Archive, leading the charge to keep our digital past from fading away, and later, musical guest Kitty Kallen, via her son Jonathan Granoff. Kitty's 1954 hit "Little Things Mean a Lot" topped the charts for nine straight weeks and made her one of the defining voices of the era.
It's our Children of Genius edition – part of a long-running series interviewing the kids of famous architects. First up, not falling far from the tree, architect Christen Johansen, son of Harvard Five member John Johansen in Connecticut's epicenter of Modernism, New Canaan. Next, Ben Colburn — a Massachusetts real estate attorney whose father, I.W. Colburn, helped define Chicago modernism and even bought an island in Scotland. Later, musical guest Veronica Swift.
On today's episode, architect Anne Fougeron spent thirty years proving that architecture can be both beautiful and socially responsible — and the New York Times named her Suspension House one of the thirteen best modern homes in the world. Laurinda Spear co-founded Arquitectonica in a 600-square-foot studio in Coconut Grove and changed the face of Miami's architecture. And, at 22 years old, our musical guest Aviana Gedler has already won numerous awards and released a debut album.
There's no business like the architecture business, and the AIA chose out first guest Carole Wedge as CEO to lead their 98,000 members. Architects Julia Jamrozik and Coryn Kempster make cool swing sets and pipe installations - and they wrote a book about kids who grew up in Modernist houses. Darcy Frank MacKay is one of those lucky kids. She grew up in a 17,000-square-foot Pittsburgh house with a rooftop dance floor, an indoor swimming pool, and furniture designed by none other than Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer.
We talk with the brilliant author and architect Richard Saul Wurman, who wrote more than ninety books, founded TED talks, and pretty much created the field of information architecture. Architectural historian Kim Hoagland sues Donald Trump over the East Wing demolition, and musical guest, the lovely Quinn Lemley, brings Hollywood glamour back to life.
On this episode, Ellen Mirro and Howard Miller of Studio TJP; then Dominic Bradbury, author of a new book on the style we all love to love, Nordic modernism. Next Andy Cohen: a magician, business strategist, and NYU professor who argues that architects and illusionists are in exactly the same business. Last to bat, musical guest, Steve Holt, a Montreal jazz pianist who gave up Wall Street and won a Juno nomination.
Will Bruder is a celebrated architect that never went to architecture school, but he became one of the most respected architects in America through apprenticing to Paolo Soleri and Gunnar Birkerts. Alex Josephson quit London's most prestigious architecture program mid-degree and struck out on his own. Greg Case isn't an architect at all — he's an ad guy who out-researched the professionals and rescued a forgotten modernist from obscurity. And Suzy Cash has a graduate degree and a résumé from one of the best firms in the South, yet she traded it for an off-grid life built with her own hands.
On today's episode, international architect Patrik Schumacher, CEO of Zaha Hadid Architects; Elias Tabache shares beautifully shot house videos of his Open Space platform, and later, musical guest Karrin Allyson.
We're revisiting conversations with two special guests who have passed away since these interviews were recorded — architect Paul Rudolph's partner Ernst Wagner and Frank Lloyd Wright's grandson, architect Eric Lloyd Wright. Ernst Wagner died in 2024 at 81. A Swiss exchange student who came to New York in 1970, he met architect Paul Rudolph and the two became lifelong partners both in architecture and in business, co-founding the Modulightor lighting company and building the landmark Modulightor Building on East 58th Street. After Rudolph's death, Ernst spent nearly three decades keeping that legacy alive, founding what has become the Paul Rudolph Institute and opening this iconic building to the public several times a month under the leadership of CEO Kelvin Dickinson.
In another of our wildly popular series, Children of Genius, we talk with family of famous architects, starting with Jennifer Lapidus, granddaughter of Morris Lapidus who reshaped Miami with hotels like the Fontainebleau. Next, Jenny Jacks Shreve, daughter of Arkansas architect Ernie Jacks, who worked on the Kennedy Center with Edward Durell Stone and the Case Study Houses with Craig Ellwood. Later, returning musical guest, Stacey Kent, one of the most noted jazz vocalists in the world.
Acclaimed architect Tom Phifer builds around light, with three decades designing buildings that make walls feel invisible. Author Alastair Gordon has written more than 28 books and knows all the midcentury Modern houses in the Hamptons that shaped American architecture. Jeanie Bryson spent decades as a jazz vocalist, sharing stages with Grover Washington Jr., Kenny Burrell, and Etta Jones. Having a famous but also secret father helped, yet losing her husband and musical partner had her step away from performing for years. Now she's back, and we're lucky to have her.
Elizabeth Gordon was editor-in-chief of House Beautiful. In April 1953 she published an influential and controversial editorial that rocked the architecture world, presenting Modernism as uncomfortable, impractical, and like communism a threat to American cultural values. We'll talk with author Monica Penick, author of the definitive book on Gordon, 2001's Tastemaker. Next up, Alison Fisher just closed a wildly successful exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago on Bruce Goff, an architect who made Frank Lloyd Wright look restrained. Wrapping up, Naama Gheber is a jazz vocalist with four albums and a voice critics have compared to Peggy Lee.
On this special edition of USModernist taped live earlier this year at the Onera Foundation in New Canaan CT, we explore diplomacy through Modernist architecture with three guests: Dublin architect Cormac Murray gives a talk on John Johansen's US Embassy in Dublin; legendary photographer Norman McGrath, who shot that building soon after it opened, and architect Christen Johansen, son of John Johansen, discusses family legacy. Laurence Lafforgue of the Onera Foundation hosts.
New York architect Tom Gluck of GLUCKplus, son of architect Peter Gluck, takes us behind the scenes of projects from prefab high-rises in Manhattan to his Tower House in upstate New York. Nick Ferrell brings the history of Modernist lighting design in Modeline of California: Pioneer of Modern Lighting, with lamps that have inspired designers for decades. And freshly-minted Pulitzer prize winner Mark Lamster updates the endangered IM Pei-designed City Hall in Dallas. Later on, special musical guest, the Grammy-winning Miami singer Jon Secada.
In Bakersfield CA, David Coffey preserves two houses one by Neutra, and one by Wright, but today we talk about his passion, Modernism in Uruguay. In Los Angeles, Cindy Olnick stewards the Neutra Institute. Later on, jazz duo Lenore Raphael and Chris Hodgkins reunite for their joyful new album, Pennies From Heaven.
We're talking about North Carolina, our home state. Architect Phil Szostak has shaped some of the state's most prominent cultural spaces and houses. Architect Ben Taylor's long career starting in the 1950's has left a lasting mark across North Carolina. Later, it's straight out of Birdland with musical guests Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks.
Imagine doing Modernist preservation – in a war zone. Dmytro Soloviov documents Ukraine's modernist architecture. Ben Wever cares for one of America's modernist treasures, the Miller House in Columbus, Indiana. Hallie Swenson uncovers the stories of San Diego Modernism, and architect Robert Stone brings new desert Modernism to life.
We dug into the podcast vault for one of the most successful and admired architects in the world, Bjarke Ingels of BIG. Later, we swoon over jazz vocalist Halie Loren.
Ready for a dose of music, design, and spectacle? Steve Young digs up wild, forgotten midcentury industrial musicals and somehow makes them catchy again. Megan Reilly turns WestEdge LA into a playground of design, ideas, and inspiration. And Erik Stabnau keeps the venerable Glenn Miller Orchestra swinging, blowing the roof off of jazz clubs, arenas, coliseums, and amphitheaters after almost 100 years.
Archivist Natalie Morath is keeper of Eero Saarinen's GM Technical Center history, bringing the amazing campus to life for yet another generation of fans. Linda Brettler renovated Raphael Soriano's 1964 Grossman House, and Marcos Santa Ana transformed the Wagoya House. Later, musical guest John Pizzarelli, with a sound that's both timeless and new.
Chris Roman designs a Modernist fire station in Richmond VA. Authors Edward Dimendberg and Crosby Doe share the story of the breakout project for Richard Neutra, the Lovell Health house in Los Angeles. Holland Murphy investigates an architectural mystery in Dallas, and from northwest Arkansas, musical guest Claudia Burson.
Joe Massaro brought an unbuilt Frank Lloyd Wright design to life and weathered 20 years of criticism from Wright purists; Corbett Jones share his new documentary on Arts and architecture magazine and the Case Study Houses; Glenn Kurtz gracked down the men in Lewis Hine's iconic Empire State Building photographs, turning symbols into real people; and musical guest Jenna Esposito keeps the 60's alive.
We've dug into the podcast vault for the story of Star Trek's furniture. Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek launched a franchise in 1966 and is still going strong 60 years later. Sequels, movies, toys, fan films - there's just no end to Star Trek's bright, progressive, optimistic future where Earth has transcended national and international politics. Something architecture fans may have missed, and we certainly did, is that Star Trek adapted midcentury Modern furniture for the set design, from the Bridge to the Conference Room, to the alien buildings on the planets they landed on. Authors Dan Chavkin and Brian McGuire about talk their book: Star Trek: Designing the Final Frontier, The Untold Story of How Midcentury Modern Decor Shaped Our View of the Future. Later on, legendary singer Jennifer Warnes, who you've loved for I've Had the Time of my Life, Right Time of the Night, Up Where We Belong, and a vast treasure of songs with and by Leonard Cohen.
Architects Carin Carlson and Tim Mitchell from Hennebery Eddy Architects restore mid-century and Mission 66–era architecture. Anthony Alofsin, one of the world's leading authorities on Frank Lloyd Wright, joins us to talk about his new book, Frank Lloyd Wright's Bogk House and reveals his new, famous cousin. Paige Figenbaum, Executive Director of the Nevada Preservation Foundation, tells us about Vegas modernism and later, musical guests Naomi & Her Handsome Devils.
Kevin McCloud and Tim Ross are hosts of Tim and Kev's Big Design Adventure, a globe-trotting podcast centered on people, places, architecture, and design. Later, baritone saxophonist Leigh Pilzer, whose powerful sound has anchored ensembles from the DIVA Jazz Orchestra to the immortal Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.
The venerable magazine Architectural Record is one of the most influential design publications in the world, clocking in 135 years of extraordinary coverage. You can see all their issues at usmodernist.org/index-ar. Today we'll explore one of their editors, Lawrence Kocher, with Luis Pancorbo and Ines Martin Robles. We'll talk with Steven Hurtt on The Urban Design Legacy of famed critic Colin Rowe, and we'll hear about celebrated architect Ulrich Franzen from Josephine Franzen. Wrapping up, musical guest Kim Kaskiw.
First up, for our concrete fans, art critic and author Blake Gopnik looks inside modernism through his book, Brutalist Interiors. Holland Murphy solves the mystery of a house in Dallas. From there, we head to St. Louis, where Pam Sanfilippo of the Eero Saarinen-designed Gateway Arch National Park shares how Saarinen's soaring 630-foot monument endures for millions of visitors. And we wrap up with the Rolling Stones of swing, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, carrying forward one of the greatest big bands with leader Jeff Bush.
Starting with Los Angeles, we'll talk with Rudolph Schindler homeowner, and star of Two and a Half Men, Holland Taylor. Then we move to Palm Springs, the center of the Universe for midcentury Modernism. Everybody who's a fan of Modernism needs to plan a trip, and today we'll talk with Palm Springs tour guides Shann Carr and JD Cargill, author Adele Cygelman and her new documentary Arthur Elrod: Modern Cool, Later music from jazz pianist Lenore Raphael.
We've dug into the podcast vault to one of our favorite shows: the story of the awesome Modernist house in the 2006 movie, The Lake House, starring Keanu Reaves and Sandra Bullock. The house stole the show, and we'll talk to the architect Nathan Crowley and the engineer, Fritz Hengge.
Today we'll talk with producers of architecture and design documentaries featured in Kyle Bergman's Architecture and Design Film Festival which opened last fall and continues around the world. Filmmaker Allie Rood's Prickly Mountain captures Vermont's countercultural design/build movement. Beck Carpenter's Space Architect tells the story of NASA architect Constance Adams, whose pioneering designs for off planet habitats inspire solutions for our own climate challenges. Danny Berish and Ryan Mah's Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines traces the life and work of one of Canada's most celebrated architects, and wrapping up, JUNO award-winning musician Brandi Disterheft.
Carol and Dan Price stepped in to save architect Victor Lundy's Bellaire, Texas, home just weeks before demolition. Erin DiFazio champions Sarasota's architectural heritage, and owner Joel Disend shares his 1959 Edward Durell Stone house in New Canaan, Connecticut. Then from teen idol to chart-topper to movie star to pro basketball team owner (and Debbie's dad), we've got the great Pat Boone, with a career spanning seven decades.
In our continuing series, Children of Genius, we'll talk with the children of extraordinary architects. First, Llisa Demetrios, Curator of the Eames Institute and youngest granddaughter of design legends Ray and Charles Eames. Next, Sarah and Cameron Nims, children of Florida architect Rufus Nims, and later, we'll talk with Gabriela Liebert, the architect reviving Nim's iconic "Jetsons House" in Miami. Then, it's the daughter of architect Irving Tobocman, and also our musical guest, jazz singer Susan Tobocman.
We've dug into the USModernist Radio vault to bring back a special interview on early 20th century Modernist Harwell Hamilton Harris, with author Lisa Germany and Harris' friend and executor, Frank Harmon.
Today on the show, George writes a song in 30 seconds. Architects Margaret Sullivan and Jim Richärd turn libraries into vibrant hubs. Glenda Flaim and Federico Engel restore a William Wurster house in San Francisco, and later we'll croon with musical guest Matt Belsante.
Today we welcome podcast host Evan Troxel of Archispeak; developer Ken Reiter, who answers the question, what do you do with a old Modernist school? Jason Langkammerer, founder of AT6 Architecture + Design Build, on renovating his own house; and returning podcast guest, the enchanting Julianna Raye, singer-songwriter and CEO of Unified Mindfulness, blending soulful music with meditation practice.
Our first guest Volker Welter uncovers how architect Leopold Fischer fled Europe to shape Modernism in the US. We have Cranbrook Museum's Chief Curator Andrew Blauvelt, and later, musical guests Gregg and Kathy Gelb in a tribute to Paul Montgomery.
We've dug into the podcast vault to bring back two interviews with internationally respected architects Moshe Safdie and Danlel Libeskind.
Shane Hood safeguards Tulsa's architectural gems. Peter Maunu lovingly restored Frank Lloyd Wright's Lamberson House in Iowa. Emily Almloff, the youngest licensed architect in the US, is transforming hospitals across the Midwest. Later, musical guests Danger Hall, with Peter Lamb and Daniel Hall.
First up, three prolific architecture authors: Alan Hess, Dominic Bradbury, and Sam Lubell. Then we meet Harper Halprin and Aaron Leshtz of AAHA Studio — a marriage proving that design collaboration isn't just for coworkers. And later, Montreal-born jazz master Steve Rosenbloom, who leads a 16-piece ensemble by night and is a psychologist by day.
Aidan Anderson is a former carpenter in Sydney Australia who turned a local furniture business into the Local Project, a worldwide media company for architecture and design. Trading a career a NASA for furniture, you will meet The Rattan Man Harvey G. Schwartz. And later, Hugh Martin, one of the founders of the UK Modern House Index, a huge digital archive documenting British modernist homes from the 1920s to today.
We've dug into the podcast vault to bring back a show from the first year of USModernist Radio. One of the best 80s films is Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Here's the plot: near the end of the school year, high school senior Ferris Bueller (played by Matthew Broderick) fakes being sick to stay home. His parents believe him, though his sister Jeanie (played by Jennifer Grey, the baby you don't back into a corner) is not convinced. Ferris persuades his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) to help lure Ferris' girlfriend (Mia Sara) out of school and let them use his father's prized 1961 Ferrari. Spoiler: that Ferrari tumbles out of a really cool Modernist house, much to the chagrin of Cameron and his dad. Our pal Bob Langford, who pretty much knows every line in the movie, drops by to help us examine this cultural icon with guest Meghann Salamasick, who with her husband Chris are the owners of the that famous Modernist house. Later in the show, with apologies to Wayne Newton, it's George and Bob and Tom serenading Meghann.
Tom Kundig of Seattle's Olson Kundig is a superstar in residential architecture, and he's got a new book, Complete Houses. But you can't have a world-class architect without a world-class builder, and we'll talk with Kundig's close friend and frequent collaborator, Jim Dow of Dowbuilt. Later, you'll hear Veronneau, a husband-and-wife duo whose tunes go around the world.
Back on the show is one of our favorite guests, YouTube architecture star Professor Stewart Hicks; Brian Horowitz revives the joy and nostalgia of pinball, that midcentury pastime that was going to rot our midcentury minds; and author Hillary Carlip shares the wonderful world of Willis Wonderland, a new popup book for all ages.
E. Fay Jones is a name most architects know but the public does not. A student of Frank Lloyd Wright, Jones blurred the line between indoors and outdoors with careful use of wood, stone, and glass. It's like these buildings just emerge from the woods. Today, we've got three people dedicated to preserving Jones legacy. David McKee worked for Jones and is the go-to guy for restoring houses. We'll talk with Jonathan Formanek, who created the E. Fay Jones Conservancy, along with his partner, Andy Whitmore, who live in the Faubus house in Arkansas. And back in the studio, we talk with influencer Maggie Weber, whose takes on bad design keep us laughing.
We've got author and architect Peter Forguson celebrating Michigan's extraordinary collection of bold, Modernist houses with the new book Contemporary Michigan, from the UK, Michael Diamant rants against Modernism, and later on, musical guest Brent Jensen serves classic tunes made famous by Paul Desmond.
Kata Walters went from the catwalk to the construction site, changing from an international career in modeling to building Modernist houses. Allison C. Meier shares her map of New York, uncovering hidden histories in architecture and culture from cemeteries to the streets. Kyle Bergman of the New York Architecture and Design Film Festival shares this year's highlights, and from Sweden, musical guest Klas Lindquist.
We're back with one of our most popular segments, Children of Genius. Them apples don't fall too far from the tree, and today we'll hear from two that dropped nearby, Toby Rapson and Ron Kappe. They grew up immersed in Modernist design with some of the most influential architecture of the 20th century, thanks to their fathers Ralph Rapson and Ray Kappe, tradition they continue today. Later, Modernist homeowner and musical guest Holly Cole.
You all know we love midcentury modern houses in Palm Springs, but what about new ones? These will be the houses we will tour and sip martinis at and give lectures about 40 years from now. Today we'll talk with one of those architects, Jill Lewis, about a new house in the Desert Palisades area of Palm Springs, along with the landscape architect for that project, John Hreno. Then we'll meet the leader of SOCOMCM, architect Edward Peck, plus returning jazz vocalist Jaimee Paul.
Who's the author of that architecture book on your coffee table? It's probably written by one of our guests, Dominic Bradbury and Adam Stech. Later on, jazz with returning musical guest Elijah Rock.
Today, it's Bartlesville, Oklahoma, home to Frank Lloyd Wright's skyscraper, the 19-story Price Tower, talking with new owners Macy Snyder-Amatucci and John Snyder, about their plan to bring the tower back to life. Then it's on to Washington DC and the administration's plans for architecture, with writer and critic Ian Volner. Next, World's Fairs with Bill Cotter, and later, music from jazz pianist Lenore Raphael.
Do you like architecture? Do you like Jeopardy? Recent Jeopardy contestant Jade Snelling is an archivist at Virginia Tech working at the International Archive of Women in Architecture, preserving the history of women architects around the world. Next we've got Catherine Croft, the Director of the Twentieth Century Society dedicated to protecting Britain's most significant 20th-century buildings. We'll hear about a new Frank Lloyd Wright house with Sarah and Debbie Dykstra. Then special musical guest, Thomas Lauderdale and Pink Martini.
Every serious Modernist fan knows about the Case Study Houses, the legendary program started by John Entenza of Arts and Architecture Magazine in the 1950's, attracting top and emerging architects to create affordable houses for Los Angeles. We'll talk with Dustin Bramell, who's working to create a new series of Case Study Houses; Cary O'Dell on the great Bucky Fuller; mother-daughter duo Sarah and Debbie Dykstra share the story of their Frank Lloyd Wright house, and music by Lenore Raphael.
Our last set of poolside interviews from Modernism Week 2025 features three fun and exciting author pairs: Corey and Margeret Bienert on midcentury motels, Jonathan Schroeder and Janet Borgerson on instructional records, and Adriene Biondo and Chris Nichols on the sporting craze of the 1950's - bowling!
Welcome to USModernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate Modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world. It's Monday, August 4, and we've got prolific architecture author Sam Lubell, Colorado architects Rowland and Broughton, and musical guest Taurey Butler. Plus, a new addition for the USModernist Archives - we're taking on architecture podcasts that stopped producing new episodes - and preservation websites that have vanished.
From the swanky USModernist compound in Palm Springs during Modernism Week 2025, it's a full schedule of poolside guests. We've got pop culture historian Charles Phoenix, the Craig Ellwood Whisperer Barton Jahncke, and authors Peter Moruzzi and Sven Kirsten on the most fun you can have in a brightly colored Polynesian shirt - tiki bars.
On the blue plate special today we've got a full platter of deliciously talented architects, with Tod Williams, Paul Masi, and Jon Gentry. Later on for a jazzy dessert, music with Carrie Marshall.
Recorded poolside at the swanky USModernist compound during Modernism Week 2025, this week we're hanging with the Daughters of Design: Susan Saarinen, Celia Bertoia, and Carla Hartman. Back in the studio, authors Phillip Cox and Niall Cronin on architect Evans Woollen, and later, a well-known NPR host who's toured with Pink Martini, special musical guest Ari Shapiro.
Joining us today is architectural historian Sian Winship; Minnesota's MVP for midcentury modern, Bobak Ha'Eri; Spencer Luckey on his playgrounds, and music by jazz pianist Lenore Raphael.
From poolside at the swanky USModernist compound during Modernism Week, we're all about two architects: Chicago's Mies van der Rohe with guests Iveta Cerna, director of the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic; and Mies's grandson, architect Dirk Lohan. Later on, we'll hear from Max Strang, archivist of Gene Leedy and his impressive Florida architecture.
This week is the close of a wildly popular exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington DC called Capital Brutalism, the history of DC's best Modernist buildings. With us is Executive Director Aileen Fuchs and head curator Angela Person. Heading to California, we'll hear what happened to a couple who went all-in on prefab, which is great, but then their prefab company went belly up, which is not. Later on, special musical guest Madeleine Peyroux dances us to the end of love.
From poolside in Palm Springs during Modernism Week 2025, today’s guests are authors Chris Rawlins on Fire Island’s Horace Gifford, Donald Luxton on Vancouver’s Arthur Erickson, and recorded at the PRP4 DOCOMOMO conference in Boston, David Fixler.
When you hear about architect Mies van der Rohe and his famous Farnsworth House in Plano Illinois, little is said of the client. Today you’ll learn the real story of Dr. Edith Farnsworth from author Nora Wendl, we talk with Todd Gannon about architect Frank Israel, plus authors Kevin Murphy and Mary Anne Hunting on women architects in the early days of Modernism. Later on, tacos with musical guest Gabrielle Stravelli.
From poolside at the swanky USModernist compound in Palm Springs, today’s guests are the three distinguished men about town. Need a midcentury sofa in green tomorrow? How about a tour for 25? Or a private cocktail party at the Dinah Shore house? Who are you gonna call? As the expression goes, we got a guy, actually three guys, who make these wonderful kinds of things happen.
From watches to undersea lodges to 21st century architecture, we’ll step outside the box a bit today to talk exquisite timepieces with Ben Rousseau, underwater house pioneer Ian Koblick, and architect John Jennifer Marx.
From poolside at Modernism Week 2025, we’ll talk with Colin Flavin, Halsey Smith, and Tim Techler on the architecture of Walter Gropius in Massachusetts and William Krisel in Palm Springs. Back in the studio, San Diego’s top Modernist realtor and ardent preservationist Keith York has a new book on Craig Ellwood -- and Alexandra Bregman hunts for a Philip Johnson house.
UPDATE: A previous version of this episode gave the incorrect location for Tim Techler's practice. He is based in Newton MA.
Today on the show number 404, architects Celeste Robbins, Grant Kirkpatrick, and Duan Tran, and podcast host Lisa Gralnek. Plus the wit and wisdom of Modernist homeowner, Burt Reynolds!
From poolside at the swanky USModernist compound in Palm Springs during Modernism Week 2025, we will meet Steve Treinen, with a new book on the Indian Canyons area in Palm Springs, plus Palm Springs architect James Cioffi, who sheds light on a pervasive myth. Back in the studio, we’ll hear from author Helen Thompson on Aspen plus lovely tunes from musical guest Champian Fulton.
Today we’ll visit with the CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Carol Quillen; the 2025 President of the AIA, Evelyn Lee; the founder of Tucson Modern, Demion Clinco, and the co-host of HGTV’s Who's Afraid of a Cheap Old House, Elizabeth Finkelstein.
From poolside at the swanky USModernist compound in Palm Springs during Modernism Week 2025, we’ll talk to Liz Waytkus, Executive Director of DOCOMOMO-US and photographer-on-a-quest Andrew Pielage. Back in the studio, we’ll hear from LA’s architect to the stars, Paul McClean and musical guest Laura Anglade.
Since launching the podcast ten years ago in 2015, hosts George Smart and Tom Guild have had fascinating conversations with over 700 guests, including architects, owners, media, critics, authors, actors, and jazz performers. USModernist Radio is one of America’s top-rated architecture and jazz podcasts, ranked in the past as #1 by Atomic Ranch and #2 by Dwell. The 400th episode features interviews with actress and Modernist preservationist Kelly Lynch and architecture critic Kate Wagner; the return of comedian Frank King; and special musical guest, Heather Rigdon. It will also include highlights from past episodes, including interviews with Bjarke Ingels; the last living Frank Lloyd Wright client, Roland Reisley; Moshe Safdie, Eric Lloyd Wright, Suzanne Somers, Youtube star Stewart Hicks, Hugh Kaptur; author Chris Rawlins; Daniel Libeskind; Harriet Pattison on Lou Kahn; Harry Bates; Myron Goldfinger; Raleigh’s Brian Shawcroft and Lewis Clarke; Mary Schindler; and Modernism opponents David Brussat, Professor J. S. Curl, and classical scholar Catesby Leigh.
From poolside at the swanky USModernist compound in Palm Springs, three stars of the Modernist movement, Alan Hess + Janice Lyle + Sidney Williams, discussing what’s become known as the Palm Springs School of Modernism and an accompanying new book. From the studio, Russell Brown and Tom Lazarus on their recent stage play called LISTING, plus returning musical guest Colleen Duffy of Devil Doll.
Modernist architecture makes special use of light and color, and with us today, architect Wid Chapman, color expert Sara McLean, and musical guest and expert skater, Laura Pursell.
Today from Palm Springs during Modernism Week we explore architect Richard Neutra with guests Raymond Neutra of the Neutra Institute and Catherine Meyler, owner of a celebrated Neutra house. Back in the studio, we’ll hear about Neutra’s VDL house in Los Angeles from Executive Director Noam Saragosti; Neutra’s sadly destroyed Maslon House from filmmaker Scott Goldstein; and special musical guests Louis Prima Jr. and the Witnesses.
You’ll hear from the principal architects of Architecture Research Office (ARO), Adam Yarinsky, Stephen Cassell, and Kim Yao. We’ll explore a 12,000 sf Modernist house in Dallas with architect Kevin Alter, and wrapping up, musical guest Carrie Marshall.
With so many good architecture books coming out, we can barely keep up. Today we’ll explore Architectural Pottery with Dan Chavkin, Jeffrey Head, and Jo Lauria; sustainable houses with Penny Craswell, and the Queen of architecture interviews, journalist and historian Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, who has a new book out on New York.
We visit with Ward Miller of Preservation Chicago; design critic and New York Magazine writer Justin Davidson; and musical guest Eddie Mugavero of the beloved Nashville swing band Bada Bing Bada Boom.
Following up on last week, three more authors with exciting books on architecture and design. DJ Waldie is the bard of Lakewood California with a new book, Becoming Los Angeles. Past podcast guest, the prolific Dominic Bradbury, has a new Atlas of modernist icons. And returning podcast guest Pierluigi Serraino shares in the new book Modern Garden how often-underappreciated landscape design was the secret sauce for midcentury modern.
With so many good architecture books coming out, we can barely keep up scheduling interviews, but we are gonna try. Joining the show are authors Aaron Betsky and Sam Lubell, architecture photographer Darren Bradley, and Danish Modern furniture savant, Carl D’Silva. More books and authors next week!
It’s architecture movie day, and with us is Valentina Ganeva, the producer/director of the latest doc on Rudolph Schindler, Schindler Space Architect. Actor Ken Ogborn shares his role in a short film on photography and brutalism in the UK. Then it’s the actress and singer we’ve loved for decades in just about everything, like Monk and Friends and The Office, Melora Hardin.
It’s another exciting edition of our Children of Genius show, with guests Jim Venturi, son of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi; Peter Nowicki, son of Matthew and Siasia Nowicki; and Sue Ann Kahn, daughter of Lou Kahn.
Today’s new mega-transportation centers are sweeping complexes for airports and subways to move millions of people. They are huge canvasses for architects like today’s guest, Scottish architect John McAslan, who’s working on the hot mess that is Penn Station. Later we’ll explore the Toast of Illinois, Champaign, with Phillip Kalantzis-Cope, author of Mid-Continent Modern and one of Champaign's architects, Jeffrey Poss. Then it’s off to New York for a fine dining breakfast in New York with returning podcast guest Monika Ryan.
Charles Moore, the architect of California’s famous Sea Ranch, was one of the chief proponents of postmodernism. His work brought a return to more ornamental detail, steep roofs, and shingles, among other classical features, and we’ll learn more from Kevin Keim, Director of the Charles Moore Foundation. Next, you’ve heard for a year about the destruction of Craig Ellwood’s Zimmerman house in Los Angeles, now you’ll hear attorney Evan Dyer’s plans to bring it back. Then we talk with Lou Grotta on preserving a Richard Meier-designed house for the future.
Paul Rudolph's buildings, built and unbuilt, continue to inspire clients, annoy critics, and gain fame, even though he died in the mid-90’s. These days, though, it’s almost all smiles and admiration, and there’s an important exhibition of Rudolph’s work at the Metropolitan Museum in New York through March. Year round on certain days, however, you can visit Rudolph’s former office in New York, the Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture, or PRIMA. And while you’re there, you can also see the late architect Myron Goldfinger’s traveling exhibition, Circle Square Triangle. Today we’ll talk with the curator of that Met exhibition, Abraham thomas, the Executive Director of PRIMA, Kelvin Dickinson, and the curator of Goldfinger’s exhibition, his partner and wife June Goldfinger. Later on, come out swinging with musical guests Chelsee Hicks and the Wholly Cats.
The Bjarke Ingels Group completed the Spiral, a tower in Hudson Yards with tree-lined terraces going around the building, all the way up. Today we’ll talk with project architect, Dominyka Voelkle. Later, you’ll discover architect Carter Sparks through his number one fan and archivist, Justin Wood. Then it’s returning musical guest, jazz superstar and high school teacher, the delightful Canadian Diana Panton.
For decades, we’ve been reading about Lindal Cedar Homes in design magazines. Now, under the leadership of third-generation President Christina Lindal they’ve branched out into compelling designs inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. And inside great houses like this, you’re probably going to need good decorating advice, so we go to Montauk New York to talk with author and interior designer Lauren Rottet. Wrapping up, musical guests Marco Palos and American Idol’s Blake Lewis of Phat Cat Swinger.
It's our annual Christmas show, and In the studio we have a partner in one of North Carolina’s hottest firms, architect Adam Sebastian. We talk with Quinn Garvey, our special agent inside the amazing Craig Ellwood house that Chris Pratt tore down in early 2024, and later, jazz with Angela Bingham.
Celebrities aren’t typically huge fans of Modernist architecture. Most prefer a 1930’s mansion or an Italianate villa. But there are a few, like Jennifer Aniston, Holland Taylor, Scott Caan, Kelly Lynch, Leonardo DiCaprio, and others who keep Modernist houses in the spotlight. Today we’ll talk with Alison Martino, producer, historian, and preservationist, the Godmother of Old Hollywood and Los Angeles. Next up, Frank Sinatra expert Bill Boggs, and later, we’ll learn about the Modernist town of Columbus Indiana from author Matt Shaw, with a new book.
The town of Lancaster OH is famous as the birthplace of David Graf, best known as Sgt. Eugene Tackleberry in the Police Academy series. Lancaster is also famous for … glassware, and their best-known creative rebel was Fran Taylor. From 1939 to 1962, Taylor ran GayFad Studios, and 60+ years after her business closed, partners Jason and David Annecy have revived the brand, opened a store, and held Bottoms Up, a wildly successful midcentury barware show this past summer. USModernist was there, interviewing the Annecys, artist Josh Agle aka Shag, and the barware lady Amy Chastek.
We can't believe it, but USModernist Radio will be ten years old soon. We'll have a special show number 400 featuring past guests and - you! Are you a fan of the show? Learned something useful? Got a funny story? Please contact George Smart george@usmodernist.org or 919.740.8407
From Australia, we talk with with architect and 2002 Pritkzer Prize winner Glenn Murcutt. From the UK, we’ve got architecture critic Rowan Moore, and wrapping up, the author of Modern Chinese Architecture: 180 Years, Nancy Steinhardt.
Rocking the California architecture scene for over 60 years, we’ll talk with Malibu architect Ed Niles. Then it’s over 3000 miles and down 500 to Florida with tropical architect Ralph Choeff. Later, one of the stars of the Purple Room in Palm Springs, musical guest Chris Bennett!
In late 2023, new owners of a classic George Matsumoto Modernist house in Raleigh NC took out a demolition permit. Usually, that’s the end of the road for a Modernist house, but Melinda and Andy Knowles stepped up and persuaded those owners to delay demolition – so the couple could move the house seven miles across town, where it has been wonderfully restored on a new site next to their existing mid-century Modernist house. And with the best architecture book of the year, we'll talk to architect and author James Biber. Later on, musical guest Allegra Levy.
We’ll talk today about Texas and California, two of our most populous states that could not be more different, with Kathryn O’Rourke and Ben Koush, authors of Home, Heat, Money, God: Texas and Modern Architecture; and Michael Webb, author of California Houses: Creativity in Context.
Talking architecture can be a little dense, wordy, and imponderable, especially for people who aren’t architects but just love talking about, visiting, and being inspired by cool buildings. Today we talk with two noted populists who make architecture understandable, architect and professor Christopher Wilson, and journalist and architourist Ken MacIntyre of modtraveler.com. Later on, musical guest Emilie-Claire Barlow.
Landscape architects are the ninjas of the design world, silently orchestrating beauty around buildings while you’re too busy staring at your phone. They decide whether that park bench is in the sun or shade, the exact curve of a sidewalk, and how to make an average building look extraordinary. They’re the ones who make sure your city doesn’t feel like a concrete jungle and that your suburban sprawl doesn’t completely lose touch with nature. Today we’ll talk with two exceptional landscape architects, Chris LaGuardia and Michael Van Valkenburgh. Later, music with Pink Martini’s Timothy Nishimoto.
In nearly every major city, housing the homeless is a major problem. Since the defunding of residential mental health programs in Reagan era, the dramatic cost of housing, and other cutbacks in the welfare safety net, America created a huge population of people with problems who have nowhere to live except outside. Especially in California, which has the most homeless citizens in America, everyone recognizes the problem but there’s complete lack of political will or consensus to significantly address it. Even with the better ideas, there’s a generally well-funded, lawyered-up constituency that’s going to fight it. Joining us today are the authors of the new book Housing the Nation, architect Alexander Gorlin and architectural historian Victoria Newhouse, with their take on what to do.
Where does the real work get done in Modernist preservation? State and local preservation groups show up at long, boring, and ridiculously bureaucratic public meetings, week after week, sometimes for years. They get historic preservation tax credits passed in most states, and they monitor everything from development to the preservation easements we talk about frequently. Joining us in the studio are two of these heroes, Preservation Durham’s Julianne Patterson and Preservation North Carolina’s Benjamin Briggs. From Chicago, we’ll talk with Ben Thomas, Executive Director of the Society of Architectural historians; later, music with Helena Redman.
Today you’ll hear from Miami architect and author Chad Oppenheim; from Long Beach architect Alan Pullman; from New Canaan author David Peterson, and later we swoon again with returning musical guest Halie Loren singing from her new album.
Being a Black architect in the white-male-dominated 20th century was tough. You were paid less, worked harder, and rarely got any credit. That is, if you could get hired at all. For example, by 1950 there were only two Black architects registered in North Carolina, both male. By 1980 the number was only 65 out of 1909. Even by 1993, Black architects made up only 7.5% nationally. Today we’ll hear from Charles McAfee, considered by many to be the greatest living African-American architect. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, supported by the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles, is working to share and elevate the achievements of African-American architects, both men and women. We’ll talk with the director that program, Brent Leggs. Later on, great jazz with Jaimee Paul.
The 2024 Architecture and Design Film Festival, or ADFF, starts up next week in New York. This long-running series is led by returning podcast guest Kyle Bergman, who founded the ADFF in New York in 2008 and hosts versions all over the world. ADFF seeks out films with impassioned, human stories that appeal to both architects and the general design-loving public. Today we’ll talk with filmmakers who’ve shown at ADFF including Sabine Gisger, Beatrice Minger, Katerina Kliwadenko and Mario Novas. Plus, we’ll talk with Kyle about the highlights for 2024. Then, it's a great conversation with actor and singer Lucie Arnaz about architecture and jazz - and Spock's half-brother.
For every 3 or 4 Modernist buildings out there, there is likely one amazing unbuilt building with plans sitting in a drawer or a hard drive somewhere. Exploring the wonderful world of the imagined but not realized, joining us are the authors of Never Built Los Angeles, Never Built New York, and the new book, the Atlas of Never Built Architecture, Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin. Later, music with Chicago’s Paul Giallorenzo.
Today we’re talking about Modernist havens San Diego and La Jolla with midcentury author and historian Keith York; plus Joan Gand and Lauren Lockhart of the La Jolla Historical Society on their upcoming Modernist tour, of which USModernist is a sponsor. Later on, jazz with Lisa Veronica Wood and the Sidecar Social Club.
It’s a sad day in the studio, because this is the last Modernism Week show of 2024. We’ve brought you 11 wonderful episodes from our annual pilgrimage, and today wraps up the series with returning guests mid-century historian Charles Phoenix; Natascha Drabbe of iconichouses.com; traveling all the way from Canberra, Australia, Phillip Jones the Martini Whisperer; and Lautner homeowner Andrew Vottero.
Today we’re talking about an architecture TV series spanning the globe and a new design documentary. Joining us is ByDesign’s Mike Chapman and IBM archivist Jamie Martin, who is featured in the new documentary Modernism Inc. Later, musical guest Paget Moren.
In this our next to last show from Modernism Week 2024, George talks with San Francisco concrete designer and architect Fu Tung Cheng, and later Marisa Mulder + Jim Burns + Brooke Babcock on composer and arranger Jimmy Van Huesen, who with Frank Sinatra as his muse carried the great American songbook to new heights in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
When the internet came along, many industries changed forever, and one of them was the auction business. Remember how exciting eBay was when everything was up for bid? Traditional auction houses had to move quickly to adapt, and the opportunities of moving from a local to a regional or national or international market through the internet were immense. One auction firm which has made a wildly successful transition is Leland Little in Hillsborough NC, and we’ll talk inside their Modernist warehouse with Modernist director Luke Newbold. Later, it’s architect, professor, attorney, and former first lady of Hartford CT, Sara Bronin, chair of the US Advisory Council for Historic Preservation, plus musical guest Roslyn Kind.
If there’s one thing architecture fans love as much as tours and parties, it’s architecture documentaries, and we’ve been covering dozens of those over the years. Recorded at Modernism Week 2024, George talks with author and Emmy-winning filmmaker Jake Gorst on his new film New England Modernism. Following that, a chat with Kirk Brown of DesignOnScreen, who funded many of Gorst’s films about Palm Springs, creating a visual history of Modernism. Later on, musical guest Laura Pursell skates into our hearts.
Oh California, where the sun is warm. Where the winds from Santa Ana make you feel like you belong. California, wherever you may roam. California keeps calling you home. Those words from the 1978 movie If Ever I see You Again, a tribute to California. Are you pining to live in the Golden State? Joining us are today are well-known California architects Leo Marmol, Wally Cunningham, Monika Hafelfinger, and Drew Pedrick.
We’ve had many shows on the great midcentury architects of Palm Springs, people like Chambers, Clark, Cody, Frey, Krisel, Sackley, Wexler, White, Williams, and the last man standing, Hugh Kaptur. But that was the 20th century, and we’re in the 21st. In fact, we’re pretty near mid-century in the 21st, so today, you’ll hear from two of today’s Palm Springs architects, Michael Kiner and Mark Daniels. They create houses that Modernist fans will be fondly touring and doing podcasts about - 30 years from now.
Michael Kimmelman is the architecture critic for the New York Times. He writes on design, housing and homelessness, neighborhood development, cities, the environment, and civil society. Then it's a delightful visit with returning musical guest Monika Ryan.
Kirsten Roech is the new executive director of Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. Then, take a ride down memory lane with Marina Coates, creator of the YouTube series Behind the Scenes, featuring tours of your favorite TV and movie houses. Later on, musical guest Andrea Carter.
Designed by Richard Meier, with project architect Tod Williams, the 1973 Douglas House is a towering white residence built on a steep, conifer-covered slope overlooking Lake Michigan. In 2007, retired Proctor & Gamble executives Mike McCarthy and Marcia Myers became the fourth owners and embarked on its second restoration, doing a deep dive to bring it back to life.
Today, we’ll talk to three people who live in Palm Springs: the folks who work to document, share, and safeguard Palm Springs’ heritage – and gladly share their stories. First, expert tour guides John Stark and Trevor O’Donnell. Later on, the President of the Palm Springs Plaza Theatre Foundation, JR Roberts, working to bring back the theatre to its full glory.
In the Modernist kitchen today, we’ve got a full course meal, starting with architect and author Scott Specht, architecture photographer Ste Murray, and wrapping up for dessert, the always delightful hosts of the podcast Bad Architecture, Sara Tietje-Mietz and Erin Kennealy.
Let’s talk art, maybe one of the paintings you could buy from today’s guests. The height of Modernist architecture was around 1962 but those butterfly roofs, dressing up for martini parties, sculpted tailfins, and even tiki décor have never been more popular. Artists Danny Heller and Josh Agle, aka Shag, each brilliantly capture that midcentury vibe that keeps us all inspired. Later on, returning musical guest the great Stacey Kent with music from her new album.
In 1966 the first episode of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek launched a franchise still going strong nearly 60 years later. Star Trek adapted midcentury Modern furniture for set design, from the Bridge to the Conference Room to buildings on the planets they landed on. In a follow up to Where No Furniture Has Gone Before, where we interviewed Dan Chavkin and Brian McGuire on their book Star Trek: Designing the Final Frontier, George travelled to Kingsland GA to see, and sit on, that special Star Trek furniture. You’ll hear from Ray Tesi, owner of Neutral Zone Studios, and Vic Mignogna, Executive Producer of the true-to-canon web series Star Trek Continues. Later on, quality time with musical guest Amanda Carr.
Welcome to USModernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate Modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world. It’s especially exciting in New York City, which punches way above its weight in architecture and architects, and today we’ll talk with three from that city, Peter Eisenman, Esther Sperber, and Richard Olcott.
Palm Springs and Los Angeles have thousands of Modernist houses, but there are many towns with their own midcentury architectural heritage. From Modernism Week 2024, we talk with David Coffey about Bakersfield CA; Palm Desert CA native and architectural researcher Luke Leuschner, then Peter McMahon with Cape Cod Modern House Trust, for an update on saving Marcel Breuer’s Cape Cod house.
There are lots of famous people named Gordon, people like chef Gordon Ramsay, actress Ruth Gordon, musician Gordon Lightfoot, and even Sting, whose real name is Gordon Sumner. Joining us are today are two Modernist Gordons, author Alistair Gordon and Chicago preservationist Barbara Gordon. Later, jazz with North Carolina’s own Kate McGarry.
Way back in 1987, New York Institute of Technology architects Michael Schwarting and Frances Campani saved the 1931 Aluminaire House from destruction, and rebuilt it. Then they had to take it apart. Now nearly 40 years later, Aluminaire House reached it’s final resting place at the Palm Springs Art Museum, visible today on the museum grounds. Recorded poolside at Modernism Week, you will hear about this visionary house, designed by Albert Frey and Lawrence Kocher, and Aluminaire’s journey from a private Long Island estate to the New York Institite of Technology to Palm Springs. Later on from the studio, we chat with architectural photographer Robin Hill.
Joining the show are three documentary filmmakers bravely capturing architects and architecture on film. Making these movies is an incredible labor of love; it takes a tremendous amount of work and time, often years, you’re fundraising continually, production is expensive, even when done on the cheap, and the financial reward at the end of all that, well, let’s say you could do better working a couple of months under the golden arches. That’s why these folks are our heroes and heroines. We’ll talk to Louise Lemoine of Beka and Lemoine, Denise Zmekhol, and Simon Mark-Brown.
From the great postwar transatlantic liners to the sleek Scandinavian cruise ships of the 1970s, to Captain Stuebing and the Love Boat, ships and private yachts are also design showcases that featured edgy, trendsetting architecture. Maritime historian and art dealer Peter Knego and yacht owner Brian Biggott joins George poolside at Modernism Week to talk about nautical Modernism. Later on, from the studio, music from the next generation of the Dave Brubeck dynasty, his son Chris Brubeck, who grew up in a Modernist house.
In May of 1950, a young man attended a packed lecture by Frank Lloyd Wright in the then-new Reynolds Coliseum at NC State in Raleigh NC. It was the largest architecture lecture ever in North Carolina. He was also witness to the construction of the 1954 Catalano House, sadly destroyed in 2001. Today George talks with architect Truman Newberry, now in his 90’s. And later on, music with the charming and mindful Julianna Raye.
Recorded poolside at the Hotel Skylark during Modernism Week in Palm Springs, prolific architect and architectural historian Alan Hess talks about California architect Irving Gill, who was doing Modernism way back in 1905; plus Erin Ellwood, daughter of Craig Ellwood, on her father’s singular legacy. Later, back in the studio, music with the enchanting Lucy Woodward.
In another of our wildly popular Children of Genius shows, we’re honored to talk with furniture designer Mira Nakashima, who carries on the tradition of her father, George Nakashima, and Peg Risom Bull, daughter of Danish furniture designer Jens Risom.
An exhibition last fall on the late architect Myron Goldfinger opened and USModernist was there moderating the panel’s remembrances. Circle Square Triangle: The Architecture of Myron Goldfinger, closed at the end of 2023 but will be touring other locations in 2024. Myron Goldfinger’s signature Modernist houses of the Hamptons and Westchester in New York include the wild party house featured in The Wolf of Wall Street. A favorite architect of New York City’s rich and powerful during the 1980s, Myron died in the summer 2023 at the age of ninety. Talking about Myron Goldfinger’s legacy were his wife and partner, designer June Goldfinger; Laura Blau, who has lived in a Goldfinger house for 50 years; legendary architectural photographer Norman McGrath; architects John Field and Joeb Moore, who worked with Myron; and designer and Hamptons preservationist Timothy Godbold. Recorded at the New Canaan Museum in the epicenter of Connecticut Modernism, New Canaan CT. Later on, we spend quality time with musical guest Lucy Wijnands.
Creating affordable, transportable, innovative prefab houses has been the holy grail of architecture for 100 years, and if you were reading DWELL in the early 2000’s, you couldn’t miss their coverage of the latest adventurers on that quest. Joining us today is one of the most successful, Michelle Kaufmann, now with Google. Later on George travels to Stamford CT to talk with Modernist architect Roger Ferris, and we wrap up with fellow podcasters Ron Melk and Kevin Kennedy of Your Valuable Home.
Ohio native Dan Duckham moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1956 after graduating in architecture from Miami University of Ohio. Three years later in 1962 he formed his own firm and over the last seven decades, Dan Duckham completed more than 500 projects, including many Modernist houses. Dan Duckham is one of the last living masters of Florida modern, and joining him is architect and author Randolph Henning, who in addition to his design practice writes books on architects following the tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright such as Alfred Browning Parker and Aaron Green. His next book is on Dan Duckham. Later on, the Queen of the American Songbook, musical guest Ann Hampton Calloway.
Recorded at New York's Architecture and Design Film Festival, George talks with Jason Cohn and returning podcast guest Fred Noyes talking Modernism Inc, a documentary about Eliot Noyes. We’ll also visit with another filmmaker from the festival, Hans Christian Post, who has a few problems with idyllic Copenhagen. And later on, music with North Carolina’s legendary bandleader, trumpeter Jim Ketch.
There’s a new edition out of the popular book Midcentury Houses Today, and we’ll have on co-author and architectural photographer Michael Biondo. Next up, someone we admire for keeping Modernist houses on the radar in Los Angeles, filmmaker Russell Brown, founder of FORT LA, aka Friends of Residential Treasures. Later on, music from Durham’s Sharp 9 Jazz club with pianist Lenore Raphael and guitarist Howard Alden.
Two authors of new books: Todd Cronan, with the book Nothing Permanent: Modern Architecture in California; and, don’t throw any stones, it’s Andrew Heid, with the book Glass Houses. Later on, George and Tom welcome musical guest Claudia Acuna.
Have you seen that photo of the two gorgeous glamourous blondes, sitting in loungers, sipping drinks by the pool of a Richard Neutra house in Palm springs? That iconic photo, called Poolside Gossip, was taken over 50 years ago by Slim Aarons. Joining us Shawn Waldron, author of a new book on Slim Aarons, and one of the two women in that photo, the Queen of Palm Springs Nelda Linsk. Later on, music with China Forbes from Pink Martini, who will tell us what really happened with Eugene.
We gear up 2024 with conversations with Damien Lipp and Stephanie Mauro on tiny houses in Iceland; Long Beach Architecture Week’s Sal Flores; a Modernist renovation in Altadena CA with Goli Karimi, and later a wonderful musical guest, Nicole Zuraitis.
In October, USModernist was at the Palm Springs Modernism Show and visited with hundreds of wonderful fans from around the country. We are going to be in Palm Springs again in February for Modernism Week, and in preparation, George spoke with today’s guests, architectural archivist Frank Lopez of Sunnylands, the Palm Springs Modernism Show’s Rosemary Krieger, artist Christopher Georgesco, Destination Eichler’s Karen Nepacena, and musical guest Lizzy Shapiro of LA’s hottest jazz and swing band, Lizzy and the Triggermen.
Returning podcast guest Takashi Yanai is a partner at Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects where he is director of both the Los Angeles and San Francisco residential studios. Returning podcast guest Mina Chow is and architect and Principal of mc2 Spaces, a multimedia company. She is also an architecture professor at USC. Mina and Takashi talk about the contributions of Asian-American architects, many of whom suffered through the forced relocation of internment camps during WWII.
Happy 2024! We open up the new year with another great episode in our continuing series Children of Genius. Francesca Breuer Wallace gives her first interview - ever - on her father Marcel Breuer; and later it’s the grandson of Aino and Alvar Aalto, Heikki Aalto-Alanen, with a new book on his grandparents.
What better subject to talk about during the holidays than Modernist bliss? Joining us is Charlotte North Carolina architect and author Toby Witte. And later, not one but two holiday musical guests: from his new Christmas album, Michael Sinatra, and bringing holiday cheer from Raleigh NC, Peter Lamb and the Wolves.
In architecture up until the 1990’s, it was raining men, and the few women architects had to work twice as hard to get the same recognition and the same pay, if they got either at all. That's slowly changing, thanks to pioneering leaders like today's guests. Phyllis Bronfman Lambert is a Canadian architect, philanthropist, and member of the family that brought Seagrams spirits to fame in the 20th century. She created the Canadian Centre for Architecture, one of the world's leading architectural museums and research centers and 1954, she oversaw the design of the Seagram Building in New York City by Mies van der Rohe. Later on, it's the first woman president of the AIA, Susan Maxman, who in the 90's broke a century of male leadership in America's largest professional association for architects.
Be careful about giving a coffee table book to your architecture-lovin’ spouse for Christmas, because one day, you might have a new Modernist house by a famous architect - plus a railroad - on your property. Joining us is Seattle brand designer Lou Maxon and his long strange journey to build a Tom Kundig house with a unique Kundig gizmo on rails. Later on, returning podcast guest Peter McMahon of the Cape Cod Modern House Trust shares his group’s wildly successful preservation of Modernist cottages, including their new campaign to buy and restore the Marcel Breuer house in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, largely untouched since Breuer died over 40 years ago. Learn more about the Maxon house at www.maxonhouse.com and www.maxonrailway.com. Learn more about the CCMHT at www.ccmht.org.
As our 23 loyal listeners know, we’re solid fans of Bjarke Ingels and his wildly successful design practice Bjarke Ingels Group spanning London, Copenhagen, New York, and China. With projects like the combination incinerator and ski slope in Copenhagen, and Via 57, One Hudson, the Spiral, and the BIG U flood protection barrier wrapping around most of Manhattan, the firm continues to do amazing projects, even designing habitats for the moon and mars. George was back at the Bjarke Ingels Group offices recently to interview BIG partner Martin Voelkle, who has overseen the design, development, and completion of projects such as 2 World Trade Center in New York, the Smithsonian master plan in Washington D.C., and the King’s Cross Google Headquarters in London. He’s also manages BIG’s few but high-profile house designs.
The architects of midcentury houses in the 1950’s and 1960’s are all retired now, some for many years. It’s a true privilege as fans from a later generation to sit down with these men and women and hear their stories. Joining us today is celebrated architect Barbara Neski of New York City, now in her 90’s, famed for award-winning Modernist houses in the Hamptons. Later, music with the charming Staci Griesbach, who headlined at one of USModernist's Moon Over Modernism events. And she's got a new album out!
Every now and then, we run into A-students who have become so accomplished in the multiple worlds of art, architecture, preservation, business, and common sense, that it’s a shame not to share those conversations. Joining us today is Christy MacLear, the founder of Artist Ventures. She’s been CEO for Superblue, a thrilling immersive experience in Miami, which you should put on your travel list; the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Philip Johnson's Glass House. She’s been Vice Chairman at Sotheby's and consulted for the Cleveland Clinic, Disney, and the fabulously midcentury modern Noyes House in New Canaan Ct. She’s a podcast producer, she’s into web3 and NFT’s and the blockchain and AI and anything cutting-edge. In her spare time, she’s been on Stanford's Arts Council, Stanford's Cantor Museum, and she’s Chair of New York City's Municipal Arts Society. George Smart, flagbearer for the B-students, engages this delightful guest.
In our ongoing series Children of Genius, we’ll talk to John Barnes, son of New York Modernist architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, and Ainsley Gores Gilligan, daughter of Connecticut architect and one of the Harvard Five, Landis Gores. They join our past interviews with family of well-known architects such as Eric and Susan Saarinen, children of Eero; Raymond and Dion Neutra, children of Richard; grandchildren of Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles and Ray Eames; and children of Craig Ellwood, Bill Cody, Charlie Gwathmey, Charles Deaton, and many more.
Few large art museums in the world are dedicated to architecture as well as art, and joining us is Adam Lerner, the CEO of one of those, the Palm Springs Art Museum. A few blocks away, that museum owns another museum, the Palm Springs Architecture and Design Museum, location of an upcoming January exhibition on architect Albert Frey, the patron saint of Modernist design in Palm Springs. Curating that exhibition, we have the noted and in-demand Palm Springs and LA designer, preservationist, returning podcast guest Brad Dunning.
Back in the 1980’s, architect Richard Meier got a commission for a series of buildings in Los Angeles. The Getty Foundation, sourced from the prestigious family of oil fame, wanted a huge new complex on land they owned off the 405. This would turn out to be one of the largest private commissions in the world at the time, costing about 1.3 billion by the time it opened in the 1990’s. Of course, the neighbors fought it, as neighbors do with just about anything Modernist, and now it’s a source of pride for all of Los Angeles. If you’re into architecture, art, history, or research, the Getty is a must-see Modernist complex, all-white, of course, that’s a Richard Meier thing. Admission is free, and it’s an astonishing accomplishment and gift to the world, especially the gardens. On the show, we’ve got Chandler McCoy, the Getty's Senior Project Specialist with Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative. Later we’ll talk AI with Michael Gilbride and how it’s affecting architecture and design.
The Modernist architecture we love is exciting, edgy, sometime inexplicable, often brilliant. Modernism has been around a long time, yet there’s also been a movement beyond Neutra and Corbusier and Gropius and Breuer and Mies, that’s frequently misunderstood. We’re talking about organic architecture, houses that make Neutra look downright classical. Organic architects are a fiercely independent breed, using their intuition like Yoda would use the Force, taking on unusual materials and construction techniques, and sculpting residences that look out of this world. More simply put, organic architecture is to modernism like monks are to priests, and these monks take their craft very seriously. As a client, you tell them what you need, but you are not going to tell them what to design. Joining us today are two prominent living organic architects, Bart Prince and Michael Johnson and later on, returning musical guests Peter Lamb and The Wolves.
Returning podcast guest Stewart Hicks is best-known for his wildly popular YouTube video series Architecture with Stewart, and in his spare time, he’s Associate Dean at the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Every few weeks, you’ll find a new YouTube release helping the general public, which is us, on topics as varied as the desperation of contemporary mall architecture, why linear cities don’t work, why people want to live in corncob-shaped buildings, the latest in toilet design, and the many ways your Roomba is spying on you.
What modernist architect doesn’t want a museum commission? Along with airports and hotels, or huge corporate campuses for tech bros, museums are the most lucrative and high-profile projects an architect can get. Budgets are big, backers are rich, publicity is guaranteed, and most of the time clients want the architect to fully self-express their wildest plans. It’s a good deal for the museum, too, as they get to brag about their remarkable new building. A graduate of the PhD program in sociology at Columbia, museum consultant Andras Szanto he has written for New York Times, ArtForum, and Art Newspaper, and has overseen the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia and the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His latest books are The Future of Museums which interviews 28 of the world’s leading museum directors – and Imagining the Future Museum, 21 conversations with prominent museum architects.
Melodie Yashar is VP for building design and performance at ICON, a firm devoted to developing 3D construction. Their neighborhood of attractive, affortable 3D-printed houses, designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group, went on sale in Austin TX this past June. Later on, we talk with German director Jan Schmidt-Garre whose latest film is The Promise: Architect BV Doshi, an intimate portrait of the late architect’s life and work. But first, we check in with Kyle Bergman, founder of the New York Architecture and Design Film Festival, on this year's lineup.
Palm Springs has seen its share of glamour, from the Hollywood celebrities who made the place their playground last century to the musicians and entertainers who kept the party going. Today we’ll hear from Will Friedwald on the jazz trio The Poll Winners; Courtney Newman on the classic entertainers who flocked to Palm springs; and Susan Claassen, who has brought legendary Hollywood costume designer Edith Head to life. If you don’t know who Edith Head is, think Edna Mode from the Incredibles movies, a character that was based on Edith Head.
Renovations on Modernist buildings can be particularly tricky. Nick Martin's firm recently remodeled Charles Gwathmey’s Tolan House in the Hamptons. Matt Loader and Iain King of Loader Monteith lead Modernist preservation projects including the Glasgow School of Art Mackintosh Building, the Jenners Building redevelopment, and something definitely not Modernist, Rosslyn Chapel, a church made famous the Dan Brown book and movie, the Da Vinci Code. More recently, Loader Monteith conserved and updated High Sunderland, a Modernist house designed by Peter Womersley.
Modernism isn't just architecture; it also highlights the artists and artisans whose textiles, ceramics, furniture, and other objects bring modern spaces to life. Recorded at Modernism Week 2023, we’ll hear from a gaggle of interesting guests: Susan Brown, Alexa Griffith Winton, Leigh Wishner and Charlotte Von Hardenburgh on textile artist Dorothy Liebes; Annalisa Capurro and Paul Ortega on the Swedish Modern design of Svenskt Tenn; ceramics historian Margaret Carney on midcentury dinnerware; and Jim Rawitch on the arts and crafts of Sam Maloof.
In 1946, Carl Strandland asked for $15 million worth of emergency loans to build small houses for GIs returning from WWII. Strandland was not an architect, but his idea that metal neighborhoods could be prefabricated and swiftly built was persuasive, and Lustron prefab house was born. To manufacture the ten tons of steel that went into each two-bedroom Lustron, Strandland bought a 25-acre factory in Columbus OH which was used during WWII to build fighter planes. A few years and only about 3,000 Lustrons later, the company declared bankruptcy but thousands of these unique houses survive. Joining us is USModernist’s resident Lustron expert, Virginia Faust, and new Lustron owner Mark Seibel. Later on, returning jazz vocalist Monika Ryan.
As more and more midcentury buildings get destroyed, we have to rely on midcentury photography collections as a window into the past and as inspiration for the future. Today we’ll talk to Ethan Wayne, son of actor John Wayne, Laurie Kratochvil, and Amy Shepherd about the John Hamilton Collection, a priceless trove of photographs from Hollywood’s golden age. After that, paint company Dunn-Edwards’s head colorist Sara McClean talks about keeping the midcentury color vibe alive. And later, jazz with North Carolina’s own Ariel Pocock.
Architectural historian Owen Hopkins has written or edited 16 books on architecture and his stories have appeared in Architectural Design, Dezeen, the Independent, and Blueprint, among many others. A graduate of the Courtauld Institute in London, Owen has served as architectural program curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, senior curator at Sir John Soane’s Museum, and now the director of Newcastle University’s new Farrell Centre. His latest book is about brutalism, those large concrete buildings many people love and King Charles and critics Roger Scruton and Dr. J. S. Curl hate hate hate hate hate. Did we mention hate?
As the book points out, Brutalist architecture inspires a passionate response, be it adulation or contempt. There’s lots of both to go around. Later on, music from some great architects, and their IT buddy, in a group called Poinsettia.
Vishaan Chakrabarti is the Founder and Creative Director of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism where he leads the firm’s growing global portfolio of cultural, institutional, and public projects. His latest book is A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America; his major argument is that well-designed cities have the capacity to address some of our gravest social ills, including environmental degradation and decreased social mobility. Missy Wood is the founder and CEO of FORMUS, a virtual reality platform for the design and building community. She’s leading FORMUS to cut costs in the construction process through the power of extended virtual reality. Returning podcast guest Sharon Prince is the CEO and founder of Grace Farms Foundation, whose interdisciplinary humanitarian mission is to pursue peace through nature, the arts, justice, community, and faith. Sharon has shepherded Grace Farms through ten-plus years of growth--including their world class building designed by SANAA in New Canaan CT that serves as the heart of the foundation. In 2020, Grace Farms launched the Design for Freedom program--devoted to eliminating forced labor in supply chains. Wrapping up, architect Jody Brown recalls his internship.
What would happen if you threw the letters of the alphabet in a hat, drew out two at random, then asked people with those initials on a podcast? Today we find out, and just like Sesame Street, today’s show is brought to you by the letters W and G. We could have chosen from musician Woody Guthrie, grandpa on the Waltons Will Geer (George: loved that guy), one of the brothers Grimm, Wilhelm, and of course architect Walter Gropius. They were, ahem, not available, so today we’ve got two wonderful living and breathing WG guests: first, architect, professor, and modernist master W. G. Clark and legendary design editor Wendy Goodman.
Architects Albert Frey and Lawrence Kocher designed the Aluminaire House in 1931 for New York’s Allied Arts and Industries Exhibition. Tens of thousands of people went through this experimental house design. Now, over 90 years later, Aluminaire has been sitting in a tractor trailer, boxed up, at the Palm Springs Museum of Art. Joining George is the project architect for the reassembly and restoration, architect and artist Leo Marmol of the legendary LA firm Marmol Radziner. Next, Frank Lloyd Wright founded the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in the mid-twentieth century. We talk with Wright Foundation CEO Stuart Graff and Jennifer Gray, director of the new Taliesin Institute established by the Wright Foundation. Later on, jazz with musical guest Elaine Lucia.
If you’re considering buying a midcentury Modern house, you’re surely going to need some repairs, maybe as much as a full renovation. Mostly likely you’re not in construction or architecture, so you’re gonna need help and you really don’t want to screw it up. The good news is that there are expert builders around the country who specialize in Modernist houses, old and new, and today we’ve got the Sultan of Schindler, Jeff Fink of LA and Santa Barbara. Later on, Drew Lang, principal of Lang Architecture, talks about Brick and Wonder, a premier networking group of design, construction, and real estate professionals based in New York.
You know when you go to an impressive Modernist building, part of what’s impressive is more than just the structure. The landscape all around the building, from the sidewalks to the signage to the plants to how the sun hits everything just right – this is the stuff that the general public often takes for granted. But it doesn’t happen by accident, and it’s not typically part done by the building’s main architect. What often takes a building from good to great is an important profession called landscape architecture. Poolside in Palm Springs, George talks with Roderick Wyllie and James Lord, partners with the award-winning San Francisco-based landscape design firm SurfaceDesign. Later on, some high-quality time with Durham jazz recording artist Al Strong.
Joining us here in the studio is designer and builder Alicia Hylton-Daniel, owner of the Durham North Carolina firm Hylton Daniel. Later on, from Romania, it’s the creator of the wildly popular “of houses” blog, architect Daniel Munteanu.
One of the most famous homes in Palm Springs is the Kaufmann House, designed by Richard Neutra. It was recently the star of Don't Worry Darling, filmed right before it sold, and there's a rich history there. Even Barry Manilow owned it at one point! Adele Cygelman is the author of Palm Springs Modern and Arthur Elrod: Desert Modern Design. Her recent research focused on Edgar Kaufmann’s first wife, Liliane, and his second, a woman who, um, assumed hostessing duties after Liliane retreated back to Pittsburgh. Cathy Whitlock is a film journalist and author of Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction. Chris Baugh is a film location manager who secured the Kaufmann house for the movie. Later on, from our studios, a legend in folk music, someone who was actually there at the Lincoln Memorial for Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic speech, musician Noel Paul Stookey of Peter Paul and Mary.
Welcome to USModernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate Modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world. Joining us today is one of foremost architectural historians in the world, professor, and former Museum of Modern Art architecture curator Barry Bergdoll, plus a special guest! Later, music with legendary jazz pianist Joanne Brackeen.
We all love midcentury Modernism, but what about new Modernist houses? How much do you follow the past versus innovating for the future? After all, we are not the same culture and technology and building materials we were in the 1950's. And what about renovations? Today's show features homeowner Sean Gaston, who's working on a restoration project close to our hearts, a hyperbolic paraboloid house; author and architect Anthony Poon; and some of the hottest residential architects in LA, Brett Woods and Joe Dangaran.
Joining us is Robert Rubin, no not the guy who was secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, although people do get them confused. This Robert Rubin built one of the world's only Modernist golf clubhouses and will be transforming that golf course into a Modernist enclave. He also saved and restored a Pierre Chareau house in Paris, the famous Maison de Verre. Later, great jazz with musical guest Libby York.
More fun Modernist places most people don't know - explored from conversations at Modernism Week 2023 between George Smart, Tom Guild, and: Simcha Schtull on the Elvis Honeymoon House, Melissa Riche and Dan Allen on Rancho Mirage, Dana Al-Marashi and TK Harvey on the United Arab Emirages; and the famous Isokon building in the UK with Magnus England and Leila DayBelge.
We're thrilled to talk with two of America's foremost architecture critics, recorded in New York City.
Alexandra Lange is an award-winning architectural critic for Curbed.com and the author of several books on architecture and America’s built environment. A graduate of NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts and a former Loeb Fellow in the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, her most recent book is Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall.
Paul Goldberger is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and educator who made his mark as an architecture critic for the New York Times. A New Jersey native, Paul studied art history at Yale University and then settled in NYC, where he now serves as the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School. He is the author of a number of books on architecture, and an advisor on matters of architecture and design to institutions all over the country. His latest book is DUMBO: The Making of a New York Neighborhood.
Today’s show, recorded at Modernism Week 2023, is places. With some great guests, we will explore Southridge in Palm Springs with architect Susan Secoy Jensen; Marfa, Texas with Dean Upe Peter Flueckiger; and the Rocky Mountains with author John Gendall. After that, music with returning podcast guest Laura Windley and her Mint Julep Jazz Band.
USModernist Radio started in 2015, one dark and stormy afternoon, and we celebrate episode 300 with a special guest architect. Devoted listeners know exactly who we’re talking about, because in past shows, every time we say his name you hear a sound. Today we welcome one of the most successful architects in the world, Bjarke Ingels of BIG. Later, we swoon over jazz vocalist Halie Loren.
Starting in the late 50’s, the Hamptons was largely farmland, and people built small, intricate Modernist houses to get away from city life. Today, with a new wave of huge houses and immense wealth controlling real estate, preservationists are focusing on both creating new modest Modernist houses and saving midcentury Modernist houses from the bulldozer. David Sokol is the former managing editor of ID magazine and the author of Hamptons Modern: Contemporary Living on the East End. When Tim Godbold he learned that Norman Jaffe’s Lloyds House in East Hampton had been torn down, he felt sure that an architectural conservancy in the Hamptons would be on the case, but as happens in many communities, none existed, so in 2020, he started Hamptons 20th Century Modern devoted saving the Hamptons’ Modernist heritage. Later on, like magic, it's musical guest Robin McKelle.
Architect John Patrick Winberry is the founding principal of the Queens-based UP Studio, recently longlisted for Dezeen’s architecture studio of the year award, and one of the firm’s latest projects is featured on CBS’s America: By Design. Later on, we meet a dynamic duo of moms and longtime friends who started flipping Modernist houses and repairing others for clients wanting to sell. Hairpin Homes partners Michelle Rembolt and Angel Kwiatkowski buy deliciously dated midcentury houses in all conditions, from houses that have too many cats to houses that have never been cleaned out.
We’ve got a full roster of guests from Modernism Week 2023 in Palm Springs. Speaking on famous midcentury architects and designers, you'll hear from Jacques Caussin on Raymond Loewy, Lila Cohen on Herb Greene, Alan Hess on Googie architecture, and Michelangelo Sabatino and Maristella Casciato on Carlo Mollino.
Today, our world is New York City, where you’ll hear conversations between George and former editor-in-chief of Architectural Record Cathleen McGuigan, architecture photographer and documentary filmmaker Bilyana Dimitrova, architect Adam Beaulieu of COOKFOX, and Common Edge editor Martin Pedersen.
Nowhere in the world celebrates Modernism better than Modernism Week in Palm Springs, California. Every February, they have a weeklong architecture and design festival, which actually lasts 11 days, and USModernist Radio was there interviewing keynote speakers plus special guests at the USModernist compound, aka poolside at the hip Hotel Skylark.
Our 2023 coverage kicks off with architecture critic, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Blair Kamin. Now retired from the Tribune, his latest book project, Who Is the City For?, pairs a selection of his essays about the inequities in Chicago’s built environment with photographs by past podcast guest Lee Bey. Later on, from a Bill Krisel house in Palm Springs, musical guest Cheryl Bentyne of the Manhattan Transfer, famous for songs like Operator and Boy From New York City. They’ve won 10 Grammys, and this year, they’re on their 50th anniversary and final world tour.
You just can’t underestimate the satisfaction of a great office chair. We spend most of our waking lives at work, often sitting, so comfort is important. And for many, the location of work has changed. Accelerated by the pandemic, your workplace is as likely to be a kitchen or den as it is a floor of offices. The KNOLL company had some of the most celebrated chairs in the world including Eero Saarinen’s womb and tulip chairs, the Barcelona chair by Mies Van der Rohe, and the Wassilly chair by Marcel Breuer. Herman Miller was famous for the Aeron chair, the Noguchi table, the Marshmallow sofa, and the Eames Lounge Chair, among many others. These companies have been the leaders in well-designed, comfortable office furniture for generations, and in 2021 they merged. With us today is Ryan Anderson, vice president for global research and insights at MillerKnoll – and podcast host of Looking Forward: Conversations about the Future of Work. Later on, jazz with the remarkable Tony Desare.
The Architecture and Design Film Festival, or ADFF, brings the stars, producers, and creators to premiere their latest documentaries. ADFF Executive Director Kyle Bergman curates visually wonderful, thought-provoking, and faithfully documented films that capture the brilliance of architects, artists, and significant buildings around the world. Bergman started the series in New York and now it’s in major cities here and abroad, and the pandemic ushered in an online series you can view from home. Today we talk to producers of two films from the ADFF. Adrian Dorschner and Thomas Beyer created the film Robin Hood Gardens, the story of a concrete housing project in London, loved by architecture fans but unloved by residents and critics, including King Charles. Later, you’ll learn about Winy Maas, founder of world class architects MVRDV in the film Under Tomorrow’s Sky, with producer Jan Lauter.
G. E. Kidder Smith was a trained architect, an architectural historian, and an architectural A prolific scholar, teacher, and author, he is the subject of a new book by Angelo Maggi. Joining us today from Switzerland is Kidder’s son, internationally acclaimed lutist, or is it lutenist, Hoppy Smith, and from Chicago architectural historian and author Michelangelo Sabatino, who wrote the forward to the book. We’re also heading to the Motor City to talk with Detroit architect Michael Poris of McIntosh Poris, helping bring back that city back from some pretty bleak times. Later on, music with returning jazz artist, the delightful Diana Panton.
One Weekend - Two John Lautner Houses!
The Kelly Lynch and Mitch Glazer Cocktail Party at the Harvey House, Saturday, April 22, 5-8pm. Explore one of the most envied houses in America! You'll share a beautiful evening overlooking downtown Los Angeles, the Griffith Observatory, and the Hollywood sign thorugh astonishing views. You'll enjoy delicious appetizers plus signature cocktails provided by Vermont Spirits, and in the famous living room...vivacious entertainment by LA jazz vocalist Staci Griesbach and her band.
The Silvertop Tour, Sunday, April 23, 12-5pm. Silvertop is the crown jewel of Silver Lake! The 1964 Reiner-Burchill Residence was designed by John Lautner and built by Wally Niewiadomski. Reiner's business got in trouble and the house sat for a decade, unfinished. In 1974, new owners Jacklyn and Phillip Burchill engaged Lautner to complete it. In 2014, the iconic house was renovated by architect and "Mayor" of Silver Lake, Barbara Bestor.
All events benefit USModernist, a 501C3 nonprofit educational archive. Tickets and Details: www.usmodernist.org/la
Los Angeles is the epicenter of Modernist houses. There are so many in the TMZ that it would take years to see even half of them. Because of sheer numbers, LA is also the epicenter for serial Modernists – those who have owned more than one Modernist house. And we owe that group huge thanks, because they are the people investing huge amounts, often more than they probably should, to preserve iconic houses by important Modernist architects and preventing these houses from being torn down. Joining us from Los Angeles Susan Orlean and John Gillespie, talking about their love affair with four Modernist homes.
We’re going all over the place today, from Bentonville Arkansas to New York City to Indianapolis Indiana with guests Dylan Turk of the Crystal Bridges Museum, Kate Scott of NABR, a development firm doing interesting things with Bjarke Ingels, and Vess Ruchtenberg, grandson of Jan Ruhtenberg, one of the most influential architects and designers you’ve never heard of.
As New Yorkers grew more prosperous in the 1960’s, they wanted to escape to the Hamptons of Long Island, a place at the time of mostly farmland – and where summer is a verb. After working briefly for Philip Johnson, architect Norman Jaffe set up his own practice and within a few years everybody who was anybody in New York society wanted a Jaffe house. Known for meticulous design and detail, and unrelenting creativity, Jaffe soon became top gun in Hamptons Modernism. But by 1993, Jaffe was stricken with prostate cancer, an unhappy marriage, and profound disillusionment from affluent and demanding clients who often refused to pay what they owed. It did not end well. Joining us today in our continuing series, Children of Genius, is his son, architect and artist Miles Jaffe.
Returning guest Frances Anderton has been telling stories and distilling ideas about design, architecture, and the cityscape of Los Angeles in print and broadcast media and at public events since 1991. Born and raised in Bath, England, Frances earned a degree in architecture at the University College of London. After serving as associate editor at Architecture Review, during which she was exposed to Los Angeles’s modernist wonders, she moved to the States, where she became the host of the wildly popular public radio program DnA: Design and Architecture. Her latest project is the book Common Ground: Multifamily Housing in Los Angeles. She’s on the board of Modernism Week and is a frequent speaker on architecture around the country.
It’s our Valentine's Day show, and what could be better than being in love? Oh man, your brain is on a euphoric, crazy, often stupid, out of your mind focus on someone or some building that lights you up. You can’t stop checking messages, you can’t stop googling. Your heart is racing, and your body is a circus of feel-good chemicals. Dopamine revs you up, and serotonin falls, taking your rational old self right into Hallmark card territory – and cutting your appetite. Adrenaline and nor-epinephrine kick in, then oxytocin like a big teddy bear, comes in for the cuddle. Are we talking about people, or Modernist architecture? Today it’s both, with three couples merging their personal and professional passions. First up, curator Sascha Feldman and architect Jacob Esocoff, and interior architects Christine Stucker and James Veal. Later, music from the fjords with Norwegian jazz couple Heidi Skjerve and Daniel Formo.
Topeka Kansas is the home of the famous Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education that ruled against segregation, it’s where Annette Bening and Katrina of Katrina and the Waves grew up. It’s where Wil Wheaton of Star Trek used to party with Penn Gillette. It’s where Dr. Phil started … a health club…. with his dad in 1971, well before being discovered by Oprah when the beef industry sued her. And it’s the home of Plains Modern, a small but intrepid group battling to save Kansas’s modernist heritage, specifically one particular state office building. Joining us today are architect and professor Michael Grogan of Plains Modern and attorney Paul Post.
Architecture is a tough field, one of the most demanding in terms of academic work. Once you graduate, a Masters Degree in something else is usually needed. Then entry level pay is seldom great, and everyone, we mean everyone – is a critic. Back in the 20th century, when Modernism had it’s heyday, the small number of black architects had it even harder, yet - they quietly created homes and buildings across America that with a few exceptions, like Paul Williams, rarely got any fame or press. White people don’t think of midcentury modern being in Black neighborhoods or created by Black architects – but there’s actually quite a lot. Today’s guest Jerald Cooper created the wildly popular Hood Century Instagram account seeking out Black-designed Modernist architecture, starting in his own town of Cincinnati.
Los Angeles architect Ray Kappe went on his own in 1954, completing dozens of Modernist houses and teaching. After serving as Founding Chairman of the Department of Architecture at Cal Poly Pomona, Kappe resigned in 1972 and started the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC) which is the Hogwarts of architecture, turned out several thousand graduates, and is considered one of the top architecture schools in the country. Ray died in his 90’s in 2019, but joining us from Los Angeles is his wife and SCI-ARC co-founder Shelly Kappe and their son, Finn Kappe. Later on, jazz from the UK with Claire Martin.
If your Mom or Dad is an architect, architecture gets into your DNA whether you like it or not, and one day, it’s gonna come out. For one amazing renaissance woman, an artist, writer, investment banker, film producer, tattoo artist agent, and economic development consultant, she had to go all the way to Iowa to buy her dream house - by Frank Lloyd Wright - and now she owns it, at least legally. As all Wright owners eventually discover, pretty soon the house owns you. Joining us is the new buyer of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Alsop House in Oskaloosa Iowa, Mia Reed, daughter of famed Florida/North Carolina architect Chuck Reed.
Joining us today is Los Angeles architect Steven Ehrlich of Ehrlich Yahai Rhee Chaney. Just like we preserve Wright and Neutra and Schindler and Lautner now, in the future we’ll be working to save Modernist houses by this 40-person firm, honored with over 150 awards including the AIA National Firm Award and 9 national AIA design awards. Later on in the show, music with Dutch jazz vocalist Laura Fygi!
Kicking off things for 2023 is Lee Bey, Chicago architecture critic, photographer for the new book Who Is the City For? with Blair Kamin, and the author of Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side. Later on, we turn up the heat with grillmaster Greg Sages, also the Executive Director of The Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut.
Since the 1950’s, the US Government has hired Modernist architects like Edward Durell Stone, John Johansen, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, and more recently Kieran Timberlake to design US Embassies all over the world. Modernism most clearly expresses the idea of freedom and these buildings are a showcase for America. But as Dr. Phil might say, “how’s that working for us?” Joining us are Angel Dizon, who supervised $2B worth of construction projects for the US State Department and is now with the GSA - and returning podcast guest Mina Chow, architecture professor at USC and producer of the documentary Face of a Nation: What Happened to the World’s Fair? Later on, musical guest Oleta Adams.
It’s our holiday show on USModernist Radio! Co-hosting with George and Tom is Raleigh architect Erin Sterling Lewis, with McGill University professor Sarah Moser on glamourous Modernist fantasy cities we drool about in glossy architecture magazines, and later on, special musical guest, the legendary Brenda Lee, to rock us yet again around the Christmas tree!
The American Institute of Architects, or AIA, is the leading professional association in the US, and USModernist Radio was there for their national conference last June in Chicago, where George talked with Katie Swenson of MASS Design Group, known for emotionally powerful buildings like the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. After that, George visits with Kira Gould, a communications strategist, author, and cohost of the podcast Design the Future who was awarded honorary AIA status. Later on, musical guest Michael Sinatra singing from the songbook many Modernists know and love.
The American Institute of Architects or AIA, is the leading professional association in the US, and USModernist Radio was there for their national conference last June in Chicago. Joining us from that conference are Jen Masengarb, architectural historian and Executive Director of AIA Chicago; Marty Hylton, legendary historic preservationist and the Historic Architect for Climate Change at the National Park Service Climate, Science, and Disaster Response Program; and later on, the President of another AIA, the Australian Institute of Architects, Shannon Battisson.
The American Institute of Architects or AIA, is the leading professional association in the US, and USModernist Radio was there for their national conference last June in Chicago. Joining us is the most relaxed person at the conference, just-retired CEO of the AIA, Robert Ivy. And later, music with American jazz legend Diane Schuur, aka Deedles.
The American Institute of Architects or AIA, is the leading professional association in the US, and USModernist Radio was there for their national conference last June in Chicago. Joining us is the most relaxed person at the conference, just-retired CEO of the AIA, Robert Ivy. And later, music with American jazz legend Diane Schuur, aka Deedles.
Wildwood used to be the Palm Springs of the Jersey Shore. No, not where Snooki and The Situation spent their misspent youth, that’s Seaside Heights, way to the north. Wildwood is three towns along a six-mile barrier island near the southern tip of New Jersey: Wildwood Crest, Wildwood, and Wildwood North, famous for a colorful array of over 300 wildly themed mid-century motels providing families wonderful vacation memories for decades. Staying in Wildwood was the first exposure to Modernism for millions of Americans. Over drinks at the Philadelphia Marriott, where they spoke at the DOCOMOMO Conference, you’ll hear George talk with Daniel Vieyra, Professor Emeritus in the Kent State University School of Architecture; Stephanie Hoagland, Principal and Architectural Conservator of Jablonski Building Conservation; and Ian Smith, Principal of IS-DG Architects.
You can have the best architect design your new Modernist house, but if your builder doesn’t know how to handle Modernist construction, materials, and details, you are in deep bleep. Joining us are two masters of the Modernist domain: Jake Goldberg, founder and president of Goldberg General Contracting in Chicago; and Kevin Murphy, founder and president of Newphire Building in Chapel Hill NC. Later on, jazz with James Torme, son of Mel.
Sometimes even the best design needs a little help, particularly when Mother Nature is having a bad day. Her earthquakes, for example, do not care whether your building is Modernist. Her monsoons are not impressed with how famous the architect was, even if he was Paul R. Williams. One of California’s most well-known architects, Williams’ buildings get more famous year by year. There are two in Los Angeles at UCLA that have been recently restored and shored up for such ominous natural events, and joining us is the architect for those University projects, Scott Kelsey of CO Architects. After that, jazz with musical guest John Armato, the drummer who loves ballads.
Ever since Modernism started, most banks have been, let's say this delicately, a huge PITA. Getting reasonable appraisals for mortgages, insurance claims, property taxes, and determining sales price is difficult, especially post-2008 when all the appraisal rules tightened up. That’s where you need an expert, someone who knows Modernist architecture and can assign fair value. Today’s guest is one of the foremost Modernist appraisers in California, James Ebert. Later on, musical guest, the classy Elijah Rock.
Schindler is a name most everyone knows, for different reasons – and for different Schindlers. There’s Schindler the elevator and escalator company, founded in 1874. There’s German industrialist Oscar Schindler, hero of the 1993 movie Schindler's List, who saved more than a thousand refugees from the Nazis. Then there’s Austrian Rudolf Schindler, the architect, who initially worked for Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1920 Wright sent Schindler west to Los Angeles. Schindler started moonlighting in 1922, which Wright hated, and eventually Schindler quit to became a huge success on his own. He and wife Pauline hosted many events at their Kings Road house, a model of architectural brilliance that's now 100 years old.
LA photographer Mona Kuhn got her first camera at 12 and she studied at Ohio State and the San Francisco Art Institute. Exhibited internationally, she has published several books of photography, her most recent entitled Kings Road, featuring Rudolf Schindler's Kings Road House. Later, we found out that USModernist's own Michela O'Connor-Abrams lived there as a child - and witnessed a secret late night burglary.
Later, profound cello with musical guest Helen Gillet.
Join USModernist and USModernist Radio at the Sheats-Goldstein house for a cocktail party November 12, and the next day at the the Stahl House for a Champagne tour. It's a rare chance to see inside these iconic Modernist houses!
Details at www.usmodernist.org/la.
In this our last show from Modernism Week 2022, we close out with fascinating poolside conversations with speakers from the week!
Aaron Betsky is a household name, if your house is full of architects. He’s a critic, curator, educator, and lecturer who is Director of the Virginia Tech School of Architecture and Design. Betsky is joined today with returning podcast guest Andrew Pielage, an internationally published architecture and travel photographer who, like Star Trek, is on a multi-year mission to photograph every single Frank Lloyd Wright building. Aaron and Andrew brought us the new book 50 Lessons to Learn from Frank Lloyd Wright.
Returning guest, architect and author Alan Hess has been on this show more times than anyone. If you’re old enough to remember Johnny Carson, Alan is the Charles Nelson Reilly of USModernist Radio. A longtime advocate for Modernist preservation, he is a prolific author with some 20 books. He’s the top presenter every year at Modernism Week.
Returning guest, fashion designer, and CEO Trina Turk has one of the most exciting brands of brightly colorful, wildly fun clothing for both men and women. Trina is also a devoted serial Modernist, having owned many houses, and an active philanthropist, contributing to preservation causes, including the USModernist Advisory Board and the fight to Move Marilyn in Palm Springs. Last February, she spoke at Modernism Week to discuss the influence of another important lifestyle entrepreneur and tastemaker, Vera Neumann.
Edward Killingsworth graduated from USC in 1940 and was the most prolific creator of Case Study Houses – a project sponsored by Arts and Architecture Magazine to provide affordable housing for returning WWII soldiers and their families. These architects included Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Rodney Walker, and the fast and furious Craig Ellwood, among others. Killingsworth, who died in 2004, won 42 AIA award and was campus architect for Cal State Long Beach for more than 40 years. Today’s guest knew Killingsworth well and honeymooned in one of his hotels, the Kapalua Bay Hotel in Maui, sadly destroyed in 2006. Architect Kelly Sutherlin McLeod of Long Beach specializes in historic preservation projects, working on buildings by Richard Neutra and Ed Killingworth, among many others. She also bought his office! Later on, swing jazz with musical guest Laura Windley.
Colin Flavin, founder of Flavin Architects, has been building modern houses in New England for more than 30 years. An avid sketch artist and an MIT grad, Colin spoke at Modernism Week on East Coast modernist residential architecture and its impact on community design.
Author and artist Justin Beal went to Yale and USC and his art is included in the permanent collections of the Albright Knox Museum, the Hammer Museum, and the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. Now a professor at Hunter College, Justin’s most recent project is Sandfuture, a look at life and work of Minoru Yamasaki, who came to fame through the Lambert-St. Louis airport and his most heralded creation, the original World Trade Center twin towers in New York City.
Later on, we visit with pop and jazz superstar Toni Tennille, the next Dolly Levi, and then sadly, our last segment with TikTok design critic Louisa Whitmore, as she leaves the show to attend University and a bright promising future.
Going back as far as Neutra and Schindler, it has always been hard as an architect to specialize in houses - and even harder to specialize in Modernist houses. Clients, even the most forward-thinking, collaborative, affluent clients, are time-consuming - when for the same amount of time you could design a 120,000 square foot office building for a much bigger fee. So those architects who are prolific with modernist houses and do it well are hard to find - and we love'em. Toshiko Mori, Annabelle Selldorf, Rick Joy, and past podcast guests Tom Kundig and Will Bruder are in this league, and with them, today's guest - architect and furniture designer David Thompson of Assembledge+ in Los Angeles. The son of architect Richard Thompson, David worked for Syndesis and Lorcan O'Herlihy before establishing Assembledge+ in 1997. David's houses are classic California Modernism, and if you want him to design your new house, lure him with sushi and a freshly-made Manhattan. Later on, musical guest Louise Cappi and a few minutes with TikTok design critic Louisa Whitmore.
Architect Eddie Jones is founder of Jones Studio, based in Phoenix AZ. He began practice in 1979, starting out with a T-square, some pencils, and a desk in his Ralph Haver-designed house. His book, Jones Studio House: Sensual Modernism, looks back on Eddie’s quiet yet influential forty-year career through photos and personal stories.
Award-winning landscape architect Signe Nielsen designed the amazing landscape of Little Island at Pier 55 in New York City, a magnificent “floating park” above the Hudson River that opened in May 2021. As founding principal of Matthews Nielsen Landscape Architects, Signe has spent more than 25 years reinvigorating modern urban spaces, including midcentury icons such as the Lincoln Center and the TWA Hotel. She is a professor of urban design and landscape architecture at Pratt and is past president of the New York City Public Design Commission.
Eero Saarinen, who died in 1961, is now one of the most well-known and respected Modernist architects in history, famous for the St. Louis Arch, the TWA Terminal at JFK, Dulles Airport, and many other innovative projects. More that about any other architect, his work signaled an optimistic future, a sweeping beautiful, curvy future that was going to require, as the song would say decades later, shades. But Saarinen wasn't always so well-known, and for about eight years before his death, there was one incredibly smart and talented woman who built and managed Saarinen's reputation into the mega-star he is today. We are joined by author Eva Hagberg, with the new book When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect. And later, somewhat miraculously, we found Ruth Clements Pudists, Eero Saarinen's secretary, still in her 90's. With a memory better than any of us, she was there during the growth of the Saarinen practice and made arrangements with Aline when he died.
Today we travel to three sunny destinations featured at this year’s Modernism Week lectures: Florida, Cuba, and San Diego.
The New York Times calls Charles Phoenix “the King of Retro” for his spirited and hilarious slide shows celebrating the midcentury American lifestyle. He started collecting vintage Kodachrome slides in the 1990s and has been giving talks and creating colorful coffee table books, a YouTube video series of classic car joyrides, and fun double decker bus tours during Modernism Week. 90 miles south of Florida, there’s Cuba. The US can’t quite decide whether we’re still mad at Cuba, but the architecture lives on and architect Monty Freeman knows all about it. An award-winning New York architect who has repurposed timeless, modern spaces around the world, Monty is an expert on Cuban architecture and leads architectural tours when the US allows it. Keith York buys and sells architect-designed homes in San Diego. He created the Modern San Diego website to help the community understand the area’s rich architectural heritage and recently curated the exhibit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Legacy in San Diego. He is working on a book about architect Sim Bruce Richards.
Earlier this year, our friends the Classicists gathered to discuss traditional and classical architecture. As the day unfolded, Modernism was predictably and continually pounded as the cause of all kinds of awful consequences on humanity. In football the referee would blow the whistle at this point for piling on. Then one lone voice of reason stood up. Today we welcome Melissa Delvecchio of Robert A. M. Stern Associates, or RAMSA, and later musical guest Paul Marinaro.
Like so many people, Erik Rosenow moved to Palm Springs for his love of midcentury architecture. He bought a 1959 Donald Wexler-designed house in El Rancho Vista Estates, founded a neighborhood community organization, and became President of the Palm Springs Preservation Foundation, where he’s still on the Board. He now lives in a 1970s brutalist townhome attributed to William Cody. Erik is the author of The Architecture of Desert Leisure, with wonderful vintage photographs and advertisements to honor condos, the buildings that like Rodney Dangerfield, don’t get much respect.
Judith Chafee studied at Yale under architect Paul Rudolph. In 1959 she was the first woman to win the Koppers Architectural Student Design Competition - however, the award ceremony was held in a men's club and Chafee had to go through the kitchen to receive the plaque. She received a BA and MA in architecture from Yale in 1960 as the only woman in her class and worked for firms such as Eero Saarinen, Paul Rudolph, Edward Larrabee Barnes, and Walter Gropius. Notably she worked on the TWA building at JFK. She moved back to her roots in Tucson to start her own firm.
Author Kathryn McGuire is an architect based in southern Arizona and worked with Judith Chafee for over 20 years. McGuire and Christopher Domin, who you may know was co-author of Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses, wrote the award-winning book Powerhouse: The Life and Work of Judith Chafee. Later, a few minutes with TikTok-famous design critic, Louisa Whitmore.
Today we’re talking about Phoenix, Arizona, home of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, Paolo Soleri’s Arcosanti, Modernist architect Al Beadle, and the world’s worst-named golf tournament, the Waste Management Open. Joining us is Phoenix architect John Anderson of 180 Degrees and legendary founder of Modern Phoenix.net, historian and preservationst Alison King.
Modernism Week in Palm Springs is a world-famous event but once you’re there you can see how important it is to local people, economy, and preservation movement. Modernism Week began in 2006 as an offshoot of the Palm Springs Modernism Show & Sale, which continues, and the annual Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture & Design Council Symposium, which did not. In February 2020, right before COVID, attendance was estimated at 162,000 across 375 events with people from all 50 and 25 countries, including our favorite guys and gals, Australian, who fly a long way to attend each year. We’ll talk with Modernism Week board members Gary Johns and Michelle Boudreau, Palm Springs historian Steven Keylon, and Urban Palm Springs CEO Deiter Crawford.
It’s not easy getting people to admit something is a problem, then getting agreement on a solution, then finding the political will and money to get anything implemented. Architectural scholars offer intricate and complex design analysis for even larger and more complex social problems. Design scholars have their own rhythmic and intense way of writing as they search to provide meaningful analysis about buildings, materials, design, planning, and social impact. All this can be a little intimidating for the general public. Imagine if Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang theory studied architecture instead of physics. Yet scholars are the R&D department for innovations that may come 5, 10, or even 50 years later. Joining us are two of the most celebrated, most wicked smart design authors - Joseph Giovannini and Kenneth Frampton. Later, music by the lovely and charming Ilene Graff.
Ron Hinklin is the most famous voice you’ve never heard of. A successful singer since his junior high school days, Ron led the group responsible for some of the most iconic sounds of the 1970s, including vocals on the Partridge Family hit “I Think I Love You,” for which Ron and his group nabbed a Grammy nomination. He also sang some of TV’s most memorable theme songs like MASH, That Girl, Batman, Happy days, Laverne and Shirley, and the famous Mickey D jingle You Deserve a Break Today. Popular music, from Big Band to Swing to Rock, had album covers and liner notes that inspired Americans yearning to be more modern. All this helped generate today’s huge consumer culture, and it’s the subject of a new book. Author Janet Borgerson is the senior Wicklander fellow at the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics at DePaul. Author Jonathan Schroeder is Professor of Communications at Rochester Institute of Technology. Together, they wrote Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America.
#257/Michelangelo Sabatino + Helen Staley + Musical Guest Don Most
Michelangelo Sabatino is a professor in the IIT College of Architecture. He has trained as an architect, preservationist, and architecture-art-design historian and has served on a number of not-for-profit organization boards ranging from the Society of Architectural Historians to Docomomo International. His books include Making Houston Modern: The Life and Architecture of Howard Barnstone and his latest, co-authored with Susan Benjamin, Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses, 1929-1975. Later on, our oldest guest yet at 100, architect Helen Staley. And he's still got it after all these years, formerly Ralph Malph on Happy Days, singer Don Most.
The development of four-lane highways and interstates in the 1950’s and 1960’s created a huge surge in car travel. In a time before the minivan, families would pile in the station wagon or the Airstream and hit the road to discover America. Roadside motels sprung up everywhere and car culture exploded. Sports cars like the wildly famous Mustang defined cool, and what better than to drive around LA or Palm Springs, or anywhere, really, than in a cool car. Today we explore cars and trailers and Modernism with three guests: Susan Skarsgard, author of Where Today Meets Tomorrow: Eero Saarinen and the General Motors Technical Center; Tom Dolle and Jeff Stork, authors of Glamour Road: Color, Fashion, Style, and the Midcentury Automobile, and returning podcast guest Eric Bricker, producer of Alumination, a new film about the iconic Airstream travel trailer.
Design critic Inga Saffron is the Philadelphia Inquirer’s most feared columnist. Raised in Levittown NY she always wanted to be a newspaper reporter - and her first beat was the Girl Scout newspaper. She attended New York University, studied in France, and settled in Dublin, Ireland writing Irish publications and Newsweek. Joining the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1984, from 1994-1998, she was their Moscow correspondent and covered the Yugoslav Wars and First Chechen War. Since 1999, she has written an architecture criticism column titled "Changing Skyline" winning multiple awards including the Gene Burd Urban Journalism Award, the Vincent Scully Prize, and the big one, the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Later on, the Inga Saffron of the 2040's, TikTok architecture critic Louisa Whitmore.
Every strong passion has … a gift shop ... with art capturing the enthusiast's lifestyle. If you’re into Star Wars or golf or architecture, the world’s artists have plenty of wonderful paintings and prints to illuminate your walls. Today we talk from Modernism Week 2022 with two artists, Josh Agle (aka Shag) and Carrie Graber, whose works hang in hundreds if not thousands of Modernist houses and many more non-Modernist houses of architecture fans. Later on back in the studio, music with jazz singer Gina Eckstine, daughter of Billy Eckstine.
One of the most well-known New York design educators, Daniella Ohad of Daniella on Design was former sergeant in the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate. She graduated from Tel Aviv University and moved to New York for a Masters from FIT and a PhD from Bard. Now she's an influencer, historian, writer, talk show host, curator, and keynote speaker. She’s committed to design education and has taught at the School of Visual Arts, Pratt, Parsons, Cooper Union, and the New York School of Interior Design. She curated and hosted events at AIA New York, the venerable 92nd Street Y; the talk show Spring/Harvest Dialogues; the video series The Collector; and the Italian network Skyarte. Her blog Daniella on Design attracts hundreds of thousands of readers weekly.
In our 5th show from Modernism Week 2022, George and Tom talk with owners of significant Modernist houses, plus one very lucky houseguest: Ronnie Sassoon who's owned houses by Hal Levitt, Richard Neutra, and Breuer; Alfonso Cordon and Cord Struckmann of Beverly Thorne's Case Study House 26; and coming into town from LA just for this interview, the man, the myth, the legend, the Kato Kaelin of his generation, Josh Gorrell. Later on, in the last of our series from his new novel, Death by Design at Alcatraz, a reading by architect and author Anthony Poon.
Here’s the story…of a lovely lady….who hired a world-famous architect to design a small but spectacular house in Plano, Illinois, along the Fox River. Things didn’t work out so well, and unfortunately Dr. Edith Farnsworth’s story has been told largely from the perspective of that world-famous architect. Joining us today to share Edith’s story, and what happened to the house, are professors Nora Wendl and Alice Friedman.
What could be more fun than Modernist dogs, tiki culture, and mid-century modern motels? George and Tom talk with the author of Palm Springs Modern Dogs at Home, Nancy Baron, motels with Heather David, author of Motel California, and dive into Tiki culture with Sven Kirsten, author of the Book of Tiki. Later on, reading from his latest novel, Death by Design at Alcatraz, Anthony Poon.
Auric Goldfinger was one of most memorable evil villains in the James Bond 007 series. Played by Gert Frobe in the 1964 movie named for him, Goldfinger, this criminal mastermind created a scheme to corner the gold market by exploding a radioactive bomb over Fort Knox, the US gold supply housed in Kentucky. That was back when the nation’s debt was a mere $311 billion and was backed by this gold, kinda like putting up your house as collateral for a loan. Goldfinger’s plan to make the gold radioactive, and therefore inaccessible, would make his own gold ten times more valuable. Bond foils this brilliant plan and lives to have some of his well-loved martinis by the time the movie ends. A few years later in real life there will be another villain, President Nixon, who said "hey, we’re not going to put up our gold any more as collateral," and whoo-doggies we’ve uber-borrowed our unsecured selves all the way up to $29 trillion dollars, more if you count unfunded Medicare and Social Security. Even James Bond cannot save us now. Goldfinger remains one of the most famous names in film, and joining us today is, like James Bond, the suave and sophisticated architect Myron Goldfinger, a classic name in mid-century Modernism, who’s experiencing a new following in his 80’s. Later on, special music with Victoria Vox.
In our 3rd show from Modernism Week 2022, we chat with award-winning architects Angie Brooks and Larry Scarpa; learn from Bruce Becker about the newly renovated Hotel Marcel in New Haven CT, formerly the Pirelli building designed by Marcel Breuer, and formerly a billboard for IKEA! Later on, reading from his latest novel, Death by Design at Alcatraz, Anthony Poon.
Some architects in the early days of Modernism designed their own furniture, among them Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolph Schindler, and Richard Neutra. Today, with a few exceptions, Modernist architects stay out of the furniture biz and rely on talented people like today’s guest, legendary furniture designer Dakota Jackson. Later on, a little slow dancing with musical guest Krisanthi Pappas.
In our 2nd show from Modernism Week 2022, we explore Modernism in Monterey CA with returning guest Pierluigi Serraino, Modernism in Bakersfield CA with Neutra owner David Coffey, and listen to a reading from his latest novel, Death by Design at Alcatraz, from Anthony Poon.
Few architects have been as exciting or controversial as Paul Rudolph, whose early successes designing Modernist vacation homes in Sarasota FL led to a later career as Chair of the Architecture Department at Yale, then nearly 30 years designing buildings with intense use of concrete and steel. While the public was largely inspired by his work, Rudolph fell out of favor in the US and shifted to Singapore and Hong Kong, where he was much heralded and sought after. Like most Modernist architecture, over the years Rudolph’s houses and buildings around the world became highly prized and at the same time, endangered. Joining us is preservationist, archivist, and President of the Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture, Kelvin Dickinson. Later on, music by the charming Tierney Sutton.
Every year USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs for Modernism Week, the Super Bowl of mid-century modernism. This is no weekend tabletop show at the Elks lodge. It takes a huge village, a rather attractive Modernist village with perfect weather, to create an event that sells over 120,000 tickets across 11 days in February. Nowhere in the world celebrates Modernism better. This was the sixth year USModernist has been at Modernism Week, talking poolside at the USModernist Compound, aka the hip Hotel Skylark, with nearly all the keynote speakers, authors, and special guests. When modern-day Dorothy's kick their red ruby slippers together, they don’t go to Kansas, they land next to in Frank Sinatra’s pool in Palm Springs. Modernism Week is a dazzling spectacle of mid-century architecture, martinis, lectures, art galleries, shopping, nonprofit benefit events, architecture documentary premieres, amazing parties at incredible houses, brilliantly curated house tours, detailed art and architecture exhibits, and much more. in this our first show from Modernism Week 2022, we talk with Chicago architect Jeanne Gang, Atomic Ranch editor Jickie Torres, and special Palm Springs musical guest, the star of the Purple Room every Tuesday night, Rose Mallett.
Welcome to USModernist Radio, where we talk and laugh with people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate Modernist architecture, the most exciting and controversial buildings in the world. One man who’s photographed many of them is Norman McGrath, whose images over the course of 6 decades have appeared everywhere from Progressive Architecture to Architecture Record. Later, jazz with the lovely Sherry Petta.
Stewart Hicks makes architecture understandable and accessible through his wildly popular YouTube channel. An assistant professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-founder of Design With Company, he covers everything from architecture superfans Brad and Kanye to why architects like flat roofs!
One of the most admired mid-century architects is John Lautner, a student and employee of Frank Lloyd Wright. Before he died in 1994, Lautner created some of the most wildly innovative and inspiring houses in the world, creating spaces and shapes that were light years in the future ahead of conventional architecture. No one except perhaps Zaha Hadid has even come close to his amazing and creative designs. With us is his daughter, and head of the John Lautner Foundation, Judith Lautner.
In Montreal, Canada, there’s an unusual modernist structure - on an island. Designed by Buckminster Fuller as the US pavilion for the 1967 World’s Fair, or what everyone else on the planet calls the World Expo, the Biosphere attracted more than 5 million visitors, and today the site is a museum dedicated to the environment. In case you are a dome geek, and we know there are some out there, the Biosphere is a Class 1 icosahedral dome, as opposed to a Class 2 dodecahedral or a Class 3 tetrahedral. Just sayin’. It’s a 32-frequency version where the inner and outer layers are connected by latticework standing two hundred feet high and covered by 1,900 acrylic panels. Joining us today from Montreal is Michele Picard from Montreal's Bureau of Public Art, plus from New York, an expert on World’s Fair history, Beverly Payeff Masey.
Elevators are essential to any large Modernist building and these days even in massive Modernist houses being built in LA. Joining us to discuss the ups and down of elevators is the Sultan of Schindler, the Oracle of Otis, the Titan of Thyssenkrupp – UNC Charlotte Professor Lee Gray, an expert on vertical transportation and the only fulltime elevator historian in the world!
Before there were interstates, which was a long long time ago, there were smaller federal highways, often two-lane, that connected the east and west coasts. Route 66 was the most famous. Along the way, you’d find roadside motels, restaurants, and bars lit up with large neon signs highly stylized buildings. Anyone remember when all the Arby’s had that 30-foot cowboy hat sign in front of each store? That’s the idea. Los Angeles was a hotbed of these buildings as post-WWII optimism generated cool-looking car washes, gas stations, burger joints, diners, bakeries, donut shops, and gas stations. 20 or so years later, they were considered junk, and then the demolitions began. Fortunately, appreciation and preservation for this low-cost unique American glamour has grown and today we talk with architectural photographer Ashok Sinha, author of Gas and Glamour: Roadside Architecture in Los Angeles. Later on, electric swing with Tape Five and Henrik Wager.
There have been movies about movies, like Get Shorty, plays about plays, like Midsummer Night’s Dream, and now a book about architecture books. Narrowing down the top 100 in architecture is the author of Buildings in Print: 100 Influential and Inspiring Illustrated Architecture Books, John Hill. Later, jazz with Marilyn Scott.
Joining us today are John O'Neill and DC Hillier, hosts of the new mid-century modern podcast, The Perspecta. Later, stick around for musical guest Eden Atwood, who will leave you … (sigh) … breathless.
Many Modernist buildings are located in New York City, but not all of them are open to the public except for one special weekend in the fall. Joining the show on this Valentine’s day are Pamela Puchalski and Dee Dunn of Open House New York, the organization that gets hundreds of buildings in the Big Apple to open up. In just a few days, Tom heads out to Palm Springs for Modernism Week 2022. George is already out there interviewing special guests we’ll have for you over the spring, summer, and fall. There are still tickets available for events at modernismweek.com but if you can’t go this year, hang out with us in 2023.
Today we are excited to introduce four really interesting design professionals who got on our radar over the last few months, including architectural historian Catherine Zipf on Frank Lloyd Wright, architect and author Bryan Toepfer on dealing with builders, preservation professional Tim Cannan on his new funding site, and the architect of one of the coolest concept houses in the world, the Darth Vader House in Houston TX, Lynn Spears.
The promise and pursuit of successful prefab houses has been going on nearly 100 years. Frank Lloyd Wright tried and it didn’t go so well. Sears, the retail store that's hurting these days, had a pretty good run in the early 20th century. For a while, people loved ordering houses right out of the Sears catalog. Later on after WWII, the cult favorite Lustron, well, not so much. There have been more than a dozen firms trying to create a modular home line that people will buy in large-enough numbers. But the idea of getting a well-designed, energy-efficient, affordable factory-built house delivered to your lot and assembled in days or weeks? What’s not to like? Today we continue the prefab quest with Connect Homes’ Gordon Stott, Jared Levy, and Greg Leung. Then we visit with Steve Glenn, founder and CEO of Plant Prefab and Steve’s collaborator, Swiss designer Yves Béhar. Later on, a few minutes with Frank Harmon.
It’s not easy being an architect. Make a living running an architecture practice can be tough. Just getting through design school is grueling, and then there's years of internship and employment detailing utility closets - while sitting in a thoughtfully beautiful but completely open office - where everyone can hear and see everything you’re saying and doing. Once out on your own, clients who want imaginative design solutions are hard to find, especially in smaller cities. The money is not great. Design isn’t enough to sell your work. Standing out in the field of architecture is also who you know, how well you sell, and how well build your brand. We talk today with architecture communications and marketing experts Liz Kubany, Iva Kravitz, Sara Kolata, and Mark LePage.
Remember when libraries were dark stately places with only books and magazines? Where if you talked at more than a whisper some stern librarian shushed you? No one likes to be shushed! And forget about eating or drinking. While those stately libraries still exist, new libraries have computers, 3d printing, video production, and even lattes. New construction is almost always modern, with naturally lit rooms replacing those dark bookstacks. Libraries have become community centers, voting centers, and social services centers, too. Joining us are two well-known Modernist library architects, Raleigh North Carolina’s Louis Cherry and from Oslo Norway, architect Siv Helene Stangeland.
This is the fifth year USModernist Radio has covered the New York Architecture and Design Film Festival, if by festival you mean mostly online and by New York you mean all over the world. Every year, producers, experts, stars, and creators gather to premiere their latest architecture and design documentaries, and this past year with COVID subsiding, but still concerning, Executive Director Kyle Bergman had a hybrid schedule of virtual and in-person screenings. Today, George talks with people behind three of those documentaries, Nico Weber of Inside Prora, Lauren Levine of Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd Wright's Modern Masterpiece, and Nathan Eddy of Battleship Berlin. Later on, a special musical guest, Storm Large.
Architect Louis Kahn has been gone almost 50 years, but his legacy and influence only grows as architects the public alike cherish his enduring importance. His major works include the National Parliament in Dhaka, Bangladesh; the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California; the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth Texas; and the Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York City. Kahn was also a revered educator, teaching at Yale and The University of Pennsylvania. Joining us today Michael Merrill, author of the new book Louis Kahn, the Importance of a Drawing, and filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn. Yes, he's related.
Oh, how times have changed for the newspaper world. From 2008-2020, about two-thirds of newsroom jobs went away. Then the pandemic hit and more than 90 local papers shut down or were slashed in headcount. Even big papers like the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and the New York Times are smaller and more focused, with digital and video media adding to but more often replacing coverage of cultural topics like architecture and design. While the big papers still cover stories like glamourous supertall buildings - and lawsuits when the pipes break - one newspaper burrowed away in the heart of New York City continues to put out some of the best, most detailed, most comprehensive architecture coverage. Joining us is Diana Darling, founder and publisher of The Architect’s Newspaper, and its new-ish editor-in-chief, Aaron Seward. Later on, architecture commentary from our special Gen Z correspondent, Louisa Whitmore, and music with Kate Earl.
Happy Holidays with George, Tom, Raleigh architect Erin Sterling Lewis, and author Elizabeth A. T. Smith, whose famous book on the Case Study Houses is an architecture heavyweight champion. The New York Times said “You need a California workout to lift it, but the book, an exhaustive homage to the houses, is worth the effort.” Architecture critic J. P. Cohen said, “This book is a true gem, and considering its size it's the Hope diamond.” Later on, the John Lautner homeowner who’s been on Batman, The Monkees, and the ultimate 60s teen movie, Beach Blanket Bingo, musical guest Donna Loren.
Columbus, Indiana is a city of just over 47,000, yet the national AIA ranks it 6th in the nation for architectural innovation and design – behind Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Washington DC. Like Marfa, Texas is for artists, Columbus is a modernist architecture fan’s heaven with an astonishing lineup of buildings by celebrated architects like Eero Saarinen, Richard Meier, I. M. Pei, and Kevin Roche. Joining us is Richard McCoy, founding director of Landmark Columbus, and Mary Chandler, Vice President of Cummins, the company that funded the design of all of these great buildings. Later on, musical guest Judy Carmichael, host of NPR’s Jazz inspired.
In 1950, a modest glass-walled Modernist house designed by Gregory Ain was on exhibit in the Museum of Modern Art’s garden, another in the Museum’s series of full scale builds of Modernist houses. A system of movable walls made flexible spaces even though there were only two-bedrooms. But once the exhibition closed, the entire house, and any knowledge of it, disappeared. Countless people over the decades searched for it. The New York Times published an article in 2017 extolling the mystery and highlighting efforts from filmmakers, academics, and the Museum to find it. Our George Smart solved this Modernist mystery, and today we'll hear from guests Emily Ain, Cornelia Cotton, Soni and Lisa Bell, David Stevens, Shaun Kelly, and New York Times reporter Eve Kahn. Later on, musical guest Alice Peacock, for which we swoon.
Remember our show a while back on Seattle Modernism with Jim Olson of Olson Kundig? Well before Jim Olson and Tom Kundig came along, the Pacific Northwest had architect Paul Hayden Kirk creating amazing Modernist houses. Joining us today is Dale Kutzera, author Paul Hayden Kirk and the Rise of Northwest Modern. Later on, travel in time back to 1961 and the Rat Pack with music from Deana Martin, daughter of one of the coolest dudes ever, singer and actor and producer Dean Martin.
Research Triangle Park in North Carolina is the largest planned research center in the United States, and it’s getting bigger - much bigger, at least in terms of buildings. During its first heyday in the 1960’s, Research Triangle Park boasted several Modernist corporate campuses, most notably aul Rudolph’s complex of buildings for Burroughs Wellcome. Now under the leadership team of today’s guest, Research Triangle Foundation CEO Scott Levitan, the park has over a billion in new investment going up – in addition to a brand new Apple Campus. Later on, a chat with Suzanne Somers about the famed Richard Neutra-designed Kaufmann house in Palm Springs, which can be yours for a consumer-friendly $17 million, $8 million off original retail price.
Architects like Chambers, Clark, Cody, Frey, Kaptur, Krisel, Wexler, and Williams put the Modernist architecture of Palm Springs on the map from the 1940’s through the 2000’s, and in Hugh Kaptur’s case, still going at age 90. Behind them are a new generation of Modernist architects and today we talk with one of the area’s most successful, Sean Lockyer. Later on, comedian and former architecture student Aaron Kominos Smith.
One of the great architects of midcentury Palm Springs was William F. Cody, featured in the Leo Zahn documentary Desert Maverick. Joining us is the author of a new book on Cody - his daughter, Cathy Cody, and later on, drummer Raice McLeod remembers the amazing singer Eva Cassidy and shares two of her songs.
When we hear about a Modernist house by an important architect being bought and destroyed, there’s widespread outrage from preservationists. Why didn’t these people try to save them? Why didn’t the buyers consult architectural historians? The owners should be forced to do whatever it takes, and whatever it costs, to keep the houses intact, right? It’s a classic struggle between property rights and preservation ideals. Turns out, though, that some of those dastardly owners actually followed the rules, got the approvals, met with the committees, consulted the historians, and still got criticized by the preservation community. Today we talk with Ross Johnston, owner of the Largent House in San Francisco, designed by Richard Neutra, and Mike and Nina Marco, owners of the Biggs House in Delray Beach Florida, designed by Paul Rudolph. Later on, music with Susannah Clifford Blachly.
Just when you thought it was another safe architecture chat, it’s our Halloween midnight madness Mod-tacular, and joining us is someone who knows where all the bodies are buried, author Henry Kuehn of Architects Gravesites – along with modern preservationist by day, horror historian by night, Christine Madrid French. Later on, music from Peter Lamb and the Wolves, hopefully under a full moon.
This has been a tough time for travel, but in between COVID surges last summer, host George Smart managed to get to New York City for a series of conversations with architect Gisue Hariri, DOCOMOMO-US founder and architecture professor Theo Prudon, and prolific architecture journalist Fred Bernstein. Later on, a few minutes with TikTok design critic Louisa Whitmore.
Connecticut is famous for the first hamburger (1895), Polaroid camera (1934), helicopter (1939), and color television (1948). It’s the home of PEZ, World Wrestling, and Design Within Reach. It’s also a hotbed for Modernist houses by many famous architects such as Philip Johnson, John Johansen, Eliot Noyes, Edward Durell Stone, Gisue and Mojgan Hariri, Marcel Breuer, and even Frank Lloyd Wright. Joining us is Ken Sena, Connecticut Marcel Breuer homeowner and recently part of the new documentary Breuer’s Bohemia by past podcast guest James Crump. Later, a conversation with Philip Johnson homeowners Craig Bassam and Scott Fellows of BassamFellows.
The European Union has some of the same problems we do: damaging climate change, a flood of immigrants, and a population frequently in disagreement. But while America argues vaccines and pounces on Hamilton’s uber-inclusive Lin-Manuel Miranda for not being inclusive enough, the EU President Ursula von der Leyden created the New European Bauhaus High-Level Round Table. Nice. These valiant design knights of the design realm include Bjarke Ingels, Shiguru Ban, Francesca Bria, and today’s guest Michela Magas, a designer and innovation specialist based in Sweden. Later on, delightful jazz with musical guest Monika Ryan.
The Stahl House in Los Angeles is among the most famous houses in the world. Designed by Pierre Koenig and engineered by William Porush, the Stahl House and its pool were immortalized by legendary design photographer Julius Shulman. In a conversation recorded poolside at the swanky Hotel Skylark in Palm Springs, where they were part of a panel discussion at the Palm Springs Museum of Art, our George Smart talks with Shari Stahl Gronwald and Bruce Stahl. They grew up in the Stahl House and spent a lot of time in that pool. Joining them is author Kim Cross of the new book The Stahl House: Case Study House #22—The Making of a Modernist Icon. Later on, an update on the New York Architecture and Design Festival with Executive Director and friend of the show Kyle Bergman, plus music with architect and artist Albert McDonald and Fallow Ground.
Peter Bohlin and Peter Gluck are two of most innovative and successful architects in residential Modernist design. In careers spanning over 14 decades, if we add them all together, their award-winning practices created several hundred award-winning houses you can see at usmodernist.org/gluck and usmodernist.org/bohlin. Later on, commentary on the the famous Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe with Louisa Whitmore.
Like the Holy Grail or Colonel Sanders special 11 herbs and spices, people have been searching for the secret to successful prefabricated houses for nearly 100 years. What could possibly be better than reasonably-priced, mostly factory built house parts assembled on your land in a matter of days or weeks, not months? The promise of well-designed houses fast and cheap turns out, not so easy – or popular with a public that still prefers developer tract houses. Joining us is Professor Avi Friedman, author of the new book Prefab Living, and Allison Arieff, founding editor at DWELL and author of the 2002 book Prefab. Later on, special musical guest Maria Muldaur, putting that camel to bed.
The bluest skies you've ever seen? The hills the greenest green? It’s Seattle, Washington, backdrop for TV shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, Frasier, and if you go back far enough, Here Come The Brides, the breakout series for 70’s pop icons David Soul and Bobby Sherman. In addition to having the most tech jobs in North America (sorry, San Jose) the Emerald city is also home to Starbucks and incredible Modernist houses from the early days of Paul Hayden Kirk to today’s guest, architect Jim Olson of Olson Kundig. Later on, jazz with singer Erin Boheme, then a few minutes with Frank Harmon.
There’s a lively city on the West Coast, a sprawling California metropolis that many consider the epicenter of Modernist architecture. Sorry, Bakersfield, it’s not you, although you’ve got two good ones we know of. We’re talking greater Los Angeles, 30,000 plus square miles from the valleys to the sea and across the mountains with thousands of Modernist houses from the 1920’s through today. Joining us is the Director of Advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy, Adrian Scott Fine, and LA city planner Ken Bernstein, author of the new book Preserving Los Angeles: How Historic Places can Transform America’s Cities. Later on, jazz from the UK with the charming Hetty Loxston.
Marcel Breuer was one of several architects who brought European Modernism to the US. He was known for hundreds of projects including the Atlanta Public Library, The Whitney Museum in New York, the Pirelli Building in New Haven, The Housing and Urban Development Building in Washington DC, and many iconic houses in Massachusetts and Connecticut. No one was more passionate than Breuer about his work - except for maybe Rufus Stillman, who commissioned four houses over the years. Joining us is James Crump, author of Breuer’s Bohemia, a new Marcel Breuer book - and movie. Later on, a few minutes with architect Frank Harmon.
Born in Zurich, Switzerland, architect Albert Frey was the first American to work for Le Corbusier, working on the famous Villa Savoye project among others. Le Corbusier helped Frey get a job with American architect A. Lawrence Kocher, also the managing editor of Architectural Record. After WWII, Frey moved to the resort community of Palm Springs and Frey become synonymous with desert modernism. His projects include the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Valley Station, Palm Springs City Hall, Tramway Gas Station, and many houses. Joining George Smart and co-host Jake Gorst, director of two films on Frey, is Craig Hartzman, executive vice chair of the Palm Springs Art Museum, which is putting on a major 2022 Albert Frey Exhibition; Brad Dunning, curator of that exhibition, and Marc Koller, Albert Frey's godson. Later on, jazz with musical guest Rebecca Kilgore, accompanied by the legendary Dave Frishberg.
Many of our Modernist listeners are planning long-delayed holidays. Oh where shall you go? Roman ruins? Cape Cod Villages? Colonial Williamsburg? We doubt it. You’re planning to hit the Modernist hotspots, and to help you we talk with Stefi Orazi, author of Modernist Escapes. Later on, the leading edge of high school architecture education with returning guest Joan Gand - then music from Palm Springs finest, the Gand Band.
In Sarasota, Florida, one of the east coast’s finest centers for Modernism, names like Paul Rudolph, Gene Leedy, Victor Lundy, Tim Siebert, and Jack West dominated the design scene from the 1940’s through the 1980’s. Then came a new generation of architects that took things to a whole new level. One of those, Guy Peterson, joins us from Sarasota. Later on, returning musical guest Heather Rigdon, then a few minutes with Frank Harmon.
What is a beautiful building? What is an ugly building? People have very different reactions looking at say Biltmore versus Fallingwater, and not just because they are vastly different sizes. Joining us to discuss beauty in architecture is Don Ruggles, author of Beauty, Neuroscience & Architecture and Producer of a new documentary, Built Beautiful. Next, special USModernist correspondent Raymond Neutra interviews Lisa Heschong, author of Visual Delight in Architecture: Daylight, Vision, and View. Later on, a few minutes with our new design commentator, TikTok sensation Louisa Whitmore.
Let’s say you collect stamps. If you go to the stamp club, you’re gonna find people who collect more stamps than you. Then if you go to the stamp convention, you’re gonna find an even more successful crowd. Then if you go to Sotheby’s for one of their top stamp auctions, you’re gonna find Mr. – or Ms. -- Big. In the world of serial Modernist owners, Mark Haddawy is Mr. Big. He’s had his hands and his budgets on more classic Modernist houses than just about anyone. Later on, music with the Sting of Sweden, Anders Holst.
It’s almost a certainty that before anyone owns a Modernist house, they own a piece of Modernist furniture, the gateway drug of great architecture. Today’s guests are Amy Auscherman, design archivist at Herman Miller, famous for the Aeron chair, Noguchi table, Marshmallow sofa, and the Eames Lounge Chair,among many other icons, and Gwen Emery, Director of Library Environments at NC State University Libraries and the author of the book ChairHunt. Later on, a few minutes with architect Frank Harmon. Plus George's quest for an ES106!
Tom Wright studies volcanoes. If that’s not exciting enough right there, and it certainly was for us, he’s also the grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright and lives in a Wright House - the last one still owned by the family. Also joining us is Wright author Steven Reiss and later, music from the breakout singer of the 1961 Newport Jazz Festival, Carol Sloane.
Architect Jim Evans moved to the Modernist mecca of New Canaan CT in 1957. By then the town had many Modernist houses, not only by the Harvard Five of Breuer, Noyes, Johnson, Johansen, and Gores but others like Frank Lloyd Wright and Edward Durell Stone. USModernist special correspondent Rafe Schlanger talked with Evans in what would be Evans' last interview. Later, enchanting jazz from Manhattan Transfer's Janis Siegel.
Every town hopes that someone will come along, and at no expense to the town, create something beautiful. We’re not talking a new mall. We’re talking acres of flowing grounds open to the public, an award-winning complex of stunningly beautiful buildings by a world-class architecture firm, and a philanthropic mission that includes, among other noteworthy causes, the elimination of slave labor in the construction supply chain. One visionary person did just that in the Modernist center of New Canaan CT, notable for houses by Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, John Johansen, Frank Lloyd Wright, Edward Durell Stone, Gisue and Mojgan Hariri, Jim Evans, and other famous Modernists. What did our heroine get in return for this amazing project? A cranky Planning and Zoning board and crankier neighbors who apparently are into lawsuits. Joining us is Sharon Prince, CEO and Founder of Grace Farms. Later on, jazz from Canada with musical guest Lily Frost.
Bertie County, North Carolina, has only about 19,000 people, about 62% Black. That's fewer than in most city zip codes. It’s one of the poorest county in the state, and the population is down about 10% over the last decade. Black farmers lost much of their land as subsidies and credit by the USDA heavily favored white farmers. In 2007, the schools were in terrible shape, as you might expect. Then, an innovative school superintendent came to town, did a great job, and got fired. One of the programs he sponsored was Project H, teaching design and construction skills to high school students. There was a documentary about this called If You Build It. Nearly 10 years later, we talk to Emily Piloton-Lam, cofounder of Project H and executive director of Girls Garage; and Ron Wesson, a Bertie County Commissioner. Later on, music with Star Search champion and Broadway star Linda Eder. This show is dedicated to that school superintendent, Chip Zullinger, who died in 2014.
Tomorrow's architects and their architecture critics are today's teenagers. Joining us are Danielle Willkens, author of the new book, Architecture for Teens: A Beginner Book for Aspiring Architects, and an actual teen critic, Louisa Whitmore, a TikTok sensation from our favorite jazz nation, Canada. Later on, surprise, surprise - Canadian jazz with Sophie Milman.
Every industry has insiders, and no city other than perhaps New York attracts more attention from residential architecture than Los Angeles. Joining us is James McClain, co-founder and editor-at-large at Dirt.com, which tracks significant celebrity houses. He's James now, but previously he had a secret identity. Later on, music from legendary jazz musician, Dave Brubeck, and his son, Darius Brubeck.
In our ongoing series Children of Genius, we’ve spoken with Raymond and Dion Neutra, sons of Richard Neutra; Guilliame Schindler, great-grandson of Rudolph Schindler; Randy Koenig, son of Pierre Koenig; Susan and Eric Saarinen, children of Eero Saarinen; Eric Lloyd Wright, grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright; Emily Ain, daughter of Gregory Ain; Celia Bertoia, daughter of Harry Bertoia, Eames Demetrios and Carla Hartman, grandchildren of Charles and Ray Eames, Erika Pfammatter, granddaughter of Walter Gropius, and Annie Gwathmey, daughter of Charles Gwathmey. Today we reach out to Palm Springs to talk with graphic designer Gary Wexler, son of architect Donald Wexler, and ophthalmologist Erik Williams, son of architect E. Stewart Williams. George chats with the new national AIA president, Peter Exley of Architecture is Fun, and later on, jazz with the lovely Connie Evingson.
Have you ever wondered what’s it’s like to live in a $5M apartment in the New York skyline? What about a $10 million coop? A $25 million penthouse? Joining us is Andi Schmied, aka Gabriella, a visual artist who pretty much became a performance artist, talking her way into some of these very posh residences. Later on, jazz with Bobbie Eakes, a face you know from Days of our Lives, The Bold and the Beautiful, and even the very last episode of Laverne and Shirley – but a voice you might not.
From an author who’s created a worldwide book of mostly Modernist buildings to a master Modernist who created beautiful buildings across the world, we’ve got a great show today. Joining us first is Adam Štěch, author of the new book Modern Architecture and Interiors, an atlas of more than one thousand Modernist architectural masterpieces; next a true master, architect Victor Lundy, along with Lundy author Donna Kacmar, and later on from Canada, our favorite jazz country, musical guest Diana Panton.
Way before there was an internet, the way people learned about buildings outside of their city was in architecture magazines. Initially in black and white, which still has a certain allure, and later in color, magazines such as Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Art and Architecture, Architecture Forum, House and Home, and Architecture Plus chronicled new construction. All of these publications, sadly, are gone – except for one. At 130 years old and still wild and frisky, Architectural Record continues to bring readers stories of amazing buildings and architects around the world – and we do love their annual Record Houses issue. We’ll talk today with Architectural Record publisher Alex Bachrach, host Aaron Prinz of the magazine’s podcast Design:ED, and all the way from the Netherlands, Phoebus Panigyrakis who did his PhD on Record's midcentury Modernist heyday. Later on, double trouble jazz with singer and trumpeter Bria Skonberg.
We love visiting great architecture and Modernist architecture does get visited – a lot – but nothing compares to the number of people who enjoy it through photography. Especially this last year, when we’ve all been hunkered down awaiting vaccinations, we’re reading and streaming visions of amazing homes, offices, and urban planning. Join us today is Wayne Thom, a photographer famous for capturing Late Modern architecture in the western US, and returning podcast guest Emily Bills, an educator and writer who just published a new book on Wayne’s work.
Researching Modernist architecture hasn't always been easy, particularly before the internet, if anyone remembers back that far. Before our phones were full of Cardi B, Tik Tok, and $32 million inheritance offers, pending a $1200 processing fee, of course, researching Modernism meant spending time in real life deep in a major library. Fortunately, the web brings incredible research resources and tools without leaving the comfort of your cool ranch Dorito-covered couch. Those are delicious, aren't they? Today we visit with two giants of Modernism research, Bill Storrer, creator of the Storrer system for Frank Lloyd Wright projects, and one of our favorite podcast guests, the Maestro of Modernism, the jolly green giant of Googie, the Samuel L. Jackson of architecture documentaries; the Ryan Seacrest of Modernism Week hosting dozens of events, author and speaker Alan Hess. Later on, a few minutes with architect Frank Harmon, reading from his book Native Places.
2020 was the fourth year USModernist Radio has been part of the New York Architecture and Design Film Festival, if by festival you mean online and by New York you mean anywhere on earth. Every fall, the authors, producers, experts, stars, and creators gather to premiere their latest architecture and design documentaries. Today we talk with Rikke Selin Fokdal and Kaspar Astrup Schröde, producers of the new documentary Making A Mountain, Bjarke Ingels flat-out brilliant solution to the unsavory task of burning trash in Denmark, a country with no mountains. Later we welcome the incomparable singer Nneena Freelon as we remember her husband, architect Phil Freelon.
Everybody’s got some niche they are into, right? There are cat people, NASCAR people, golfing people, escape room people, and even after 55 years, Star Trek people. Today we welcome leaders in two special niches of Modernism, Beth Lennon, aka Mod Betty, of Retro Roadmap, and Howard and Gaby Morris of GreyScape, a London website dedicated to Brutalism, Modernism, and Constructivist design. Later on, jazz with the wonderful Melissa Morgan.
Whenever our friends the Classicists want to troll Modernism, they claim it's Communist-inspired and therefore no good. Since we have never known any building to determine economic policy, joining us are two people who dive deep into this "concrete" issue in the former Eastern Bloc: Haruna Honcoop, director of the film Built to Last: Relics of Communist Era Architecture, and Marie Kordovska, granddaughter of of Věra and Vladimir Machonins, late-modern architects from Czechoslovakia. Later on, musical guest Hailey Tuck.
Harriet Pattison met renowned architect Louis Kahn in 1953 at Yale, but the real sparks flew years later in Philadelphia where she and Lou Kahn had a romantic relationship and a son, Nathaniel. It was, um, complicated. Pattison is an accomplished landscape architect, working in the Vermont office of the famous Dan Kiley and studied landscape architecture under Ian McHarg at the University of Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts. She collaborated with Kahn on a number of projects, especially fulfilling, after his death in 1974, the 2012 completion of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in New York City. In 2016 she was inducted as a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects. Her new book is Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn. Joining Pattison is former Kahn staff members Richard Saul Wurman and Reyhan Larimer, plus Steve Kroeter, publisher of a re-released book on Kahn.
It’s one thing when neighbors don’t like that butterfly mother in law shed in your backyard. It’s another when thousands of people in a city are without housing and neighborhoods don’t want them anywhere close. Over the decades, architecture has proclaimed the solution to this and other social problems can be solved through design, but as Dr. Phil might ask, “how’d that work out?” Not so well, as large mid-century public housing projects proved over and over. Today, however, there are new approaches and new understandings of both public policy and design that hold great promise. Joining us today are Andrea Urton. CEO of HomeFirst Services, a Silicon Valley agency supporting housing the homeless, and architect Michael Lehrer of Los Angeles. Later on, from the Lone Star State, jazz vocalist Rosana Eckert.
Well-known Modernist architects came to fame in a time before computers, a time where getting published in magazines was the mid-century equivalent of going viral. Even if an architect lived in a large metro such as Los Angeles, world of mouth and house tours wouldn’t get you the big commissions. Blowing up meant having photos of your work in major publications of the era. To get those photos, you had to have a great photographer who really understood design and light and capturing the beauty of a project. Joining us are Eric Bricker, producer of Visual Acoustics, a documentary about the life and career of celebrated architecture photographer Julius Shulman, and Keith Isaacs, one of the South’s rising stars in architectural photography. Later on, jazz with the fabulous Stacey Kent.
If you’re a longtime listener, you know we have a special place in our hearts for Palm Springs, the mecca of Modernism, the home of the international film festival, the bedroom for concerts in Indio, and the cruising town that Sonny Bono cleaned up in the late 1980’s before he ran for Governor. It’s our home away from home, but even Paris has reinvent itself from time to time. Today’s guests are looking to 2030, 2040, and beyond, and we welcome Dick Burkett, Sidney Williams, and Richard and Debra Hovel. Later on, a few minutes with Frank Harmon.
This is the fourth year USModernist Radio has been part of the New York Architecture and Design Film Festival, if by festival you mean online and by New York you mean anywhere on earth. Every fall, the authors, producers, experts, stars, and creators gather to premiere their latest architecture and design documentaries, and this year because of COVID Executive Director Kyle Bergman completely re-engineered a wildly successful in-person weekend into a compelling virtual series. George and Tom talk with the people behind three of those documentaries, Royal Kennedy Rogers of Hollywood’s Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story, Meredith Zielke and Yoni Goldstein of A Machine for Living, and Ned Daly of The Closer You Look. Later on, Brazilian guitar, via Kentucky, from Pat Kirtley.
Architect Charles Dubois was famous for designing houses in California which earned the nickname Swiss Miss. Designer Leonora Mahle takes us inside. Later on, for something completely different, we’ll visit with Lady Carnarvon, the owner of Downton Abbey, aka Highclere Castle. Set on 5000 acres, it’s the most famous house in Britain, except perhaps for an adorable little London starter home, by comparison, called Buckingham Palace, that a certain senior citizen - with a crown - lives in. Wrapping things up, one of the most beautiful voices in jazz today, Jane Monheit.
Like the Supremes, or Destiny’s Child, today’s guests have been rocking with the greatest hits of Modernist design for decades as the daughters or granddaughters of its most iconic architects and designers, Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, and Harry Bertoia. Carla Hartman, Susan Saarinen, and Celia Bertoia are the best of friends and speak around the country as the Daughters of Design.
Before Bjarke Ingels, before Tom Kundig, before Charlie Gwathmey, even before Richard Neutra, two brothers rocked the architecture scene in southern California in the early 1900’s. Funded by the family behind Ivory Soap, Proctor and Gamble’s first product, Charles and Henry Greene perfected the modern bungalow in Pasadena and influenced a giant in Modernist architecture, Harwell Hamilton Harris. Joining us is Ted Bosley, Executive Director of the Gamble House plus Raleigh architect Frank Harmon, who was close friends with Harwell Hamilton Harris and executor of his estate. Later on, one of the top jazz vocalists in the world, Eliane Elias.
In 1959, the US had 48 states and a population of 177 million, Frank Sinatra won his first Grammy for Come Dance with Me, DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, which had been banned for decades, became OK to print, and a certain exciting and controversial architect died in his 90’s. Frank Lloyd Wright left an incredible legacy of innovative and beautiful buildings, one of which just changed hands last year in Phoenix, Arizona. We talk with architects Victor Sidy and Amanda Hu about the David Wright house, designed by Frank for his son.
In 1978, Australia decided to replace their old Congress, or Parliament House, in the capitol of Canberra. The competition drew 329 entries from 29 countries. The winner was a Modernist design from the Philadelphia firm of Mitchell/Giurgola. Today we meet project architect Hal Guida, plus Felicity Abbott, the production designer for Secret City, a Australian TV political thriller starring Anna Torv filmed extensively at Parliament House.
Some Classicists are so passionate about Modernist architecture they create a well-financed, highly effective organization to point out the flaws of Modernist buildings and actively discourage new Modernist projects. Every Classicist we talk to mentions today’s guest, Catesby Leigh, who has written about architecture for over 30 years. He co-founded the National Classical Art Society, headed by past podcast guest Justin Shubow, which advocates the classical tradition in Federal buildings and monuments. He's a gifted writer and essayist and organizer, and we're surprised he hasn't won the Henry Hope Reed Award, the Oscar of Classicism, because no one is more deserving. If they accept nominations from us Modernist heathens, we’d like to be first to put his name in the hat. Later in the show, we sing to, and listen to, the charming Lucy Woodward.
Architect Maria Ludwig Michael Mies changed his name. He added his mother's maiden name Rohe and the Dutch “van der” to become, drum roll please, Mies van der Rohe. Most of his fans just refer to him as Mies – like Cher or Moby or Beyonce, he’s still one of the most famous architects in the world some 50 years after his death. Today we talk about his greatest house – the Farnsworth House – with Alex Beam, author of the new book Broken Glass: Mies Van Der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece - and Scott Mehaffey, Executive Director of the Farnsworth house in Plano IL, which you can visit. Later on, a few minutes with Frank Harmon, reading from his book Native Places.
In 1966 the first episode of Gene Roddenberry's Star Treklaunched a franchise still going strong over fifty years later. Sequels, movies, toys, fan films - there’s just no end to Star Trek’s bright, progressive, optimistic future where Earth has transcended national and international politics. Something architecture fans may have missed, and we certainly did, is that Star Trek adapted midcentury Modern furniture for the set design, from the Bridge to the Conference Room, to the alien buildings on the planets they landed on. Today we meet authors Dan Chavkin and Brian McGuire about their new book: Star Trek - Designing the Final Frontier - The Untold Story of How Midcentury Modern Decor Shaped Our View of the Future. Later on, legendary singer Jennifer Warnes, who you’ve loved for I’ve Had the Time of my Life, Right Time of the Night, Up Where We Belong, and a vast treasure of songs with and by Leonard Cohen.
Ho Ho Ho, get out the Festivus Pole, it’s our holiday show spectacular celebrating with returning guest co-host Erin Sterling Lewis. If your world is Florida, Gene Leedy was one of the masters of Modernism in the 20th century, bursting on the scene as one of Architectural Record's most successful young architects of 1965. With us is his daughter Saffie Leedy Ferris and architect Max Strang of Miami, who grew up in a Gene Leedy house, and worked for Gene Leedy. Later on, special musical guest Laura Ridgeway and the story of the legendary jazz nightclub, the Frog and Nightgown. This show is dedicated to Peter Ingram, co-founder of that club, who died in November 2020.
Mack Paul is a Raleigh real estate attorney who focuses on land use and public policy. He owns a sweet Modernist house designed by Brian Shawcroft, and he's an investor in several new Raleigh Modernist projects. Charlie Miller is a real estate broker in Charlotte who expanded to building exciting new Modernist houses – lots of them. We’ll also check in with Matt Bliss and Greg Kelly for unique Modernist gifts to think about for the holidays, Later on a few minutes with Frank Harmon, reading from his book Native Places.
Victoria Ballard Bell's new book, Triangle Modern Architecture, documents the rich history and unique cultural significance of the Triangle region in North Carolina, one of the most important on the national map of modern design. Over the last 75 years, the Modernist architecture in this area has grown to creatively combine innovation and technology with the area’s history, culture, unique landscape, and built context. Includes profiles on midcentury architects including Harwell Hamilton Harris, Leif Valand, Milton Small, George Matsumoto, Eduardo Catalano, Jon Condoret, and Brian Shawcroft, plus current Modernist modern architects including Kenneth Hobgood, Phil Szostak, Phil Freelon, Turan Duda, Ellen Cassilly, Ellen Weinstein, and Frank Harmon who wrote the foreword. It’s an outstanding history of Triangle architecture, and then there’s also some dude who wrote the epilogue. The book is Triangle Modern Architecture, published by ORO Editions, available at your favorite local bookstore or through USModernist.
Along with Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, LeCorbusier, and Marcel Breuer, architect Walter Gropius was one of the most influential Modernist architects of the 20th century. Gropius founded the heralded Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, but the rise of Hitler in the 1930's drove Gropius first to London working for Maxwell Fry, and later to Cambridge MA where he taught at Harvard and MIT. His post-war houses with Marcel Breuer were a distinctive combination of unusual geometries that people still treasure as owners and as fans. His granddaughter Erika Pfammatter is a musician, music teacher, and former minister of music. She's also the daughter of architect Charles Forberg and the stepdaughter of another famous architect, John Johansen. Later, a very special Gropius-related song by the one and only Tom Lehrer, still going strong at 92.
For your audible dining pleasure, today is a sumptuous Modernist buffet featuring Ralph Rapson, Elizabeth Schue Close, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Howe, and save room for dessert, a hazelnut Bjarke Ingels topped with marscapone. Yum! Jane King Hession is a Minneapolis-based architectural writer and historian specializing in midcentury modernism. With degrees in English and Art History and architecture, she is past president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and the Minneapolis Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. Her latest book is Elizabeth Scheu Close: A Life in Modern Architecture, and she’s also written Frank Lloyd Wright in New York: The Plaza Years; John H. Howe, Architect: From Taliesin Apprentice to Master of Organic Design; and wait, there’s more. Minnesotans loved her book Ralph Rapson: Sixty Years of Modern Design which won the David Gebhard Award, named for the well-known author of LA Modernism books.
If your world is Wichita, Kansas, the birthplace of Pizza Hut, White Castle and Kirstie Alley, there’s no more controversial building right now than Century II, a performing arts space built by John Hickman, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, that’s under siege from new development. Century II Performing Arts & Convention Center was built to commemorate Wichita’s 1970 centennial. Designed by architect John Hickman, the very Modernist Century II was built provide a large and attractive civic center with a Concert Hall, Convention Hall, Exhibition Hall, and later an expo hall and an attached Hyatt Regency. Our guest today is one of the best and hardest-working Modern preservationists in the country. With the mind of an auditor, the precision of a concert violinist, and the number-crunching of an MBA, because she is all three, Celeste Bogart Racette leads the movement to save Century II from the bulldozer. She has a personal connection to the building - as her father was Mayor at Wichita when it was built. Later on, a few minutes with Kyle Bergman on the upcoming Architecture and Design Festival, this year online.
Architecture in America has been a white-dominated profession and that has been changing slowly. Very slowly. Guess what year the first Black woman got an architecture license in our fine state of North Carolina. 1950? 1970? It was 1990. Today we welcome author and photographer Janna Ireland with a new book out on the most famous Black architect of the 20th century, Paul Williams, plus that pioneering architect from 1990, Danita Brown.
Like the Dos Equis commercials, we don’t always feature Classicists, but when we do, we go for the best. Today we welcome one of America’s foremost classical architecture advocates, the Dr. Downtown of Providence Rhode Island, journalist David Brussat. Such a cool nickname. David runs the blog Architecture Here and There and wrote for 30 years for the Providence Journal. He has received the Oscar of Classicism, the Arthur Ross Award from the Institute for Classical Architecture. That’s a big deal. Prince Charles won that award. David is a tireless advocate for the return of classical design to public architecture and apparently loves taking Mrs. Downtown to something called Waterfire, which we’ll find out about. Later on, a return visit from musical guests Peter Lamb and the Wolves.
Sniff, sniff! Where's the Kleenex? It is such a day of mourning, because from our wonderful trip to 2020’s Modernism Week, today we share the last two interviews. What an amazing run: 18 shows, over 50 brilliant, interesting guests, all the frittatas and bacon we could eat every morning, and all the martinis we could responsibly drink in the evenings. We've saved some of the best for last: our special closing guests are architect Takashi Yanai and car culture expert, author Gabrielle Esperdy.
In our ongoing quest to seek out and visit other architecture podcasts, we’ve had wonderful conversations with hosts Frances Anderton, Donna Sink, Steve Chung, Josh Cooperman, David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, Bob Borson, and Debbie Millman. And hey, Roman Mars, you're next - so how about getting 99% visible with us? Today on the show, two talented architect podcasters from different ends of the country: Della Hansmann of the Mid Mod Remodel Podcast in Wisconsin and Catherine Meng of the Design Voice Podcast in California. Later on, a few minutes with Frank Harmon, reading from his book Native Places.
Modernism Week in Palm Springs is no weekend tabletop show at the Elks lodge. It takes a huge village, a rather attractive Modernist village with perfect weather, to create an event that sells over 120,000 tickets across 11 days in February. There are hundreds of volunteers, and the week after it closes down, they start planning for the next year. George Smart talks some of the people who make it happen – Modernism Week board members Maureen Erbe, Anne Rowe, and Alan Hess, plus Janice Lyle, the director of the Sunnylands complex, one of Modernism week’s partners and most popular tours.
One of the most popular lectures at Modernism Week 2020 was Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, looking at what influenced architecture, design, art, film, and West Coast jazz in the 1950s. These forms became shorthand for beauty, sophistication, and confident urban living. Today host George Smart interviews three of the five panelists from Birth of the Cool: Elizabeth Armstrong, former Director of the Palm Springs Art Museum and co-author of the book Birth of the Cool; Michael Boyd, her co-author and furniture, landscape, and architectural designer; and past podcast guest Brad Dunning, interior designer and writer. Later on, two great friends of the show: ace Palm Springs tour guide Trevor O’Donnell, who knows the story behind nearly every significant house in the valley, and frequent Modernism Week visitor, the Chief Curator of Philip Johnson's Glass House in New Canaan CT, Hilary Lewis.
Woodward “Woodie” Garber was a Modernist architect whose name you would know if you lived in Cincinnati. Garber was called “a controversial visionary whose advocacy of an uncluttered openness in design grows more influential every year.” He was a brilliant independent Modernist who wanted things his own way, daring even to refer to Frank Lloyd Wright as Frank Lloyd Wrong. Architecture was not the only controversy in his life. Being married to him, or being his child, was to experience the fury of bipolar disorder coupled with a desire to control everything – and everyone – in his path. There was a lot to process, on so many levels. He died in 1994, and it took 24 years for our guest, daughter Elizabeth Garber, to write Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter. Later on, a few minutes with Frank Harmon, author of Native Places.
Charles Phoenix is the ambassador of mid-century Americana. From his wildly popular slideshows and lectures on life in the 1950’s to his sold-out double decker bus tours of Palm Springs, he’s a crowd fave in Palm Springs. Charles sits down with host George Smart poolside at Modernism Week 2020 and later, George visits with the king of the Viewmaster, that iconic plastic toy we love with the circular reels. Martin Knowles spoke at Modernism Week on View-Master: Keeping It Reel in 3-D for 80 Years and launched exciting new reels featuring houses by Midcentury Modern architects like Hugh Kaptur, Bill Krisel, Donald Wexler, and E. Stewart Williams.
Modernism Week attracts reporters and photographers from all over the world. They make the flight or the drive into Palm Springs to cover the architecture, the art, the lectures, the occasional celebrity, and most of all, the lifestyle that we immerse ourselves into all 11 days. Plus, there’s the huge economic impact of Modernism Week on the economy, making it rain on those Palm Springs butterfly roofs. From Modernism Week 2020, host George Smart talks with Desert Sun business reporter Melissa Daniels, and later he visits with architecture photographer Elizabeth Daniels and CURBED reporter Pauline O’Connor, just after a delicious breakfast of Frittatas, waffles, granola, and bacon at the USModernist compound.
One of the most revered names in Modernist architecture is Richard Neutra. From coast to coast, but mostly in California, Neutra’s many Modernist houses set the standard for open, comfortable living – bringing the outside in, reducing clutter, and maximizing every square foot of a house and its usually beautiful site. Host George Smart talks with Richard Neutra’s son, Raymond Neutra, about architecture, the passing of his brother Dion, and the future of Neutra Institute. Next, Catherine Meyler bought a rundown Palm Springs Neutra house 20 years ago and brought it back to life after almost losing it to the elements. Wrapping up, George talks with owner Ken Topper of the famous Lovell Health House in LA, the place that brought Neutra to huge public fame back in 1929.
From Robin Boyd to Harry Seidler to Glenn Murcutt, there’s a lot to love in Australian architecture, and today we talk with Dustin Clare and Camille Keenan, the producers behind a new streaming service and within it a new streaming series on Australian design. Their new architecture series, Inspired Architecture, premiered recently on their new streaming architecture and design network, shelter.stream.
Nowhere in the world celebrates Modernism better than Modernism Week in Palm Springs, California. Every February, they have a huge architecture and design festival and for the last five years, USModernist has been there interviewing nearly all Modernism Week’s keynote speakers plus special guests at the USModernist compound, aka poolside at the hip Hotel Skylark.
John Lautner designed some of the most innovative, beautiful, and concrete-intensive residences in the world. Host George Smart talks with Lautner’s right-hand architect, Helena Arahuete, who continues his legacy over 25 years after his death, restoring Lautner houses and creating new ones for a new generation of appreciative owners. George also visits with Tracy Beckmann and Ryan Trowbridge, owners of the Lautner Hotel in Desert Hot Springs, California, a little town only 20 minutes from Palm Springs. It’s a hotel Lautner designed with only four rooms, each one a masterpiece. And wrapping up, George talks with a great friend of USModernist, Trina Turk, CEO of the world-famous clothing line and new-ish owner of a vintage Lautner house in Los Angeles.
Nowhere in the world celebrates Modernism better than Modernism Week in Palm Springs, California. Every February, they have a huge architecture and design festival and for the last five years, USModernist has been there interviewing nearly all Modernism Week’s keynote speakers plus special guests at the USModernist compound, aka poolside at the hip Hotel Skylark. In our second Modernism Week show on interiors, George Smart meets with two experts on what makes the Modernist vibe so wonderfully livable: Sarah Archer is a contributing editor at American Craft magazine and the author of The Midcentury Kitchen: America’s Favorite Room, from Workspace to Dreamscape. She spoke at Modernism week on The Kitchen of Tomorrow: Space Age Design in the High Tech Modern Home. Later on, George talks wth Laura Ackerman-Shaw who established Ackerman Modern and worked with her father, Jerome Ackerman, and Design Within Reach to re-release a collection of iconic Jenev ceramic vessels first produced in 1953, with new pieces produced based on the original plaster molds.
You all remember the 1994 movie Speed, the huge hit with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock? Ten years later, with the public clamoring for more Keanu and Sandra, they shot another movie but got completely upstaged by a co-star built of glass and steel. The Lake House was a romantic fantasy film about a magic time-traveling mailbox for a particularly beautiful Modernist house. Joining us today are the architect and structural engineer for that house, Nathan Crowley and Fritz Hengge, as we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the birth and death of one of cinema's most amazing homes. Ready to be swept off your feet? Get ready for celebrated jazz singer and Modernist homeowner, the poetic, soulful, unicorn-producing Heather Rigdon, singing from her album Young and Naive.
Most Americans have not been to Australia, although a surprising number of Australians have traveled to America. From Sydney to Melbourne to their stunning capital of Canberra, Australian Modernism is just as popular there as in the US. Today hosts George Smart and Tom Guild talk with four Aussies among the 50 or so that came to Palm Springs last February during Modernism Week: Rachel Jackson, Annie Price, Jamie Paterson, and wrapping up, a great friend of USModernist, Ms. Modernism Annalisa Capurro.
Today in our second Modernism Week show on architecture movies, George Smart talks with three film industry professionals with connections to architecture. Valentina Geneva is working on a new documentary about LA architect Rudolph Schindler, and later he sits down with art director Jeannine Oppewall, the genius behind staging the sets of such films as L.A. Confidential (filmed in Richard Neutra’s Lovell House). Wrapping up, a chat with Paula Benson, expert on the close connection between film and furniture.
Today, we dial into Miami, Florida, home of sun, fun, and some of the most over-the-top new Modernism on Earth. In the foodchain of Miami culture, a chain which features ceviche, plantains, rum, ropa vieja, and Max Strang, one of the most well-known architects is Kobi Karp, who is not surprisingly CEO of Kobi Karp Architecture and Interior Design with many happy clients. His wife must be super happy too, because Karp recently got rapper flo-Ryda to appear for her birthday. Later, a few minutes with Frank Harmon, reading from his book Native Places.
Architect Jim Jennings joins us from San Francisco. His Visiting Artists House, recipient of the AIA 2006 Institute Honor Award for Architecture, was named one of the five most influential and inspiring houses of the past decade. He was awarded the 2019 Maybeck Award by AIA California, and he teaches at Berkeley. Later on, a few minutes with Frank Harmon, reading from his book Native Places.
Nowhere in the world celebrates Modernism better than Modernism Week in Palm Springs, California. Every February, they have a huge architecture and design festival and for the last five years, USModernist has been there interviewing nearly all Modernism Week’s keynote speakers plus special guests at the USModernist compound, aka poolside at the hip Hotel Skylark.
Almost all the famous names in the pantheon of mid-century modern architecture are, well, male, a function of the widely held but false belief there weren’t many women interested in architecture, plus the sad but true fact that these women were marginalized by the profession, their colleagues, and the media. Host George Smart meets with MW speakers Libby Otto and Jane Hall, two authors discussing amazing women in architecture we don’t know about – and why we should.
Today we welcome two internationally-known artists whose work focuses on mid-century identity: houses, cars, stores, and the relaxed sunny lifestyle to which we all would like to become accustomed. Danny Heller from Desert Hot Springs CA and John Pirman from Sarasota FL create bright and uplifting paintings and prints that make you smile. Their colorful, engaging portrayals of mid-century architecture and lifestyle bring joy to the world through showings in galleries and in thousands of homes.
There’s a shining star for Robert and Helene Alexander on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars - installed last February during Modernism Week. Although largely unknown outside of California, the Alexanders were critically important developers and builders to the expansion of Modernism. While other developers were afraid of Modernist design, as a lot still are today, sad to say, the Alexanders went all-in, working with important architects like William Cody and Bill Krisel to create thousands of homes we love around Palm Springs. Host George Smart talks with Jill Alexander Kitnick, daughter of the Alexanders, and Jim Harlan, author of a new book on the Alexanders.
Later in the show, George and Tom chat with special musical guest Colleen Duffy from Devil Doll, singing from her new album plus her biggest hit Bourbon in your Eyes.
Host George Smart talks with two architects in New York the day before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. Born in Russia, raised in Canada, and now living in the US, architect Julia Gamolina has been a runaway success as the founder of Madame Architect, publishing over 100 interviews with women who advance the practice of architecture and affiliated fields, celebrating women from different generations, countries, and corners of the industry. Then it’s a subway ride to meet Gene Kaufman, the most successful hotel architect in New York and the head of legendary design firm Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman.
Nowhere in the world celebrates Modernism better than Palm Springs, California. Every February, they have a huge architecture and design festival called Modernism Week which actually lasts 11 days. We were there interviewing nearly all the major speakers and special guests.
When we can't go to Modernist houses ourselves, architectural photographers bring them to us, both new and iconic, by waking up at 5am to get the right light, or taking hours to set up a shot only available a few minutes. Hired by architects, magazines, and occasionally clients, architectural photographers ultimately become historians, their body of work becoming a visual timeline to the evolution of design, materials, and photography itself.
Darren Bradley travels the world on architecture assignments and runs the wildly successful Instagram feed @modarchitecture. In 1998, he and his wife rented a mid-century modern house in Palm Springs, and he was smitten. He began researching, exploring and appreciating modernist architecture more and more. Darren's work has appeared in large-format art books, academic and professional architecture journals, and lifestyle magazines around the world. He regularly accepts international commissions from architects, builders, developers and homeowners.
Returning guest Andrew Pielage is an architectural and travel photographer based out of Phoenix with 20 years creating photography by capturing the heart and inspiring the imagination. Pielage has photographed some of the best architecture and most beautifully stunning landscapes on the planet and talks about his quest to shoot every Frank Lloyd Wright building in the world.
You don’t typically think of bridges as architecture, not the highway ones, particularly. There are about 600,000 in the US, with only a few dozen getting anyone excited, and most of those like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge were built nearly 100 years ago. Today from the UK we welcome Martin Knight, an architect whose heralded bridges worldwide create portals to cities while helping cars, trains, and pedestrian traffic from one place to another. Founded in 2006, his firm won several high-profile international design projects and what soon will be the longest bridge in Helsinki, Finland. He joins us from just outside of London in a place called Taplow, which is an award-winning 1966 Modernist area designed by Eric Lyons.
In the first of two shows on Modernist interiors and interior designers, host George Smart chats poolside with two organizers of the Alexander Girard exhibition held during Modernism Week at the Palm Springs Museum of Art, Christine Marvin of Marvin Windows and Doors and Michela O’Connor Abrams of MOCA+, and later he talks about interior designers Steve Chase and Arthur Elrod with former Chief Curator of the Museum, Katherine Hough, who worked with them both.
There's a new streaming series on AppleTV+ called Home, nine shows about unusual houses around the world. George Smart talks with one of Home's Story Producers Loren Gomez about two of those houses, one in Sweden that's totally enclosed by a greenhouse and one in Texas that's pretty much underground.
Today you’ll meet two CEO’s of HOK, one of the most successful architecture firms in the world, past CEO Patrick MacLeamy and current CEO Bill Hellmuth. Every architecture student knows HOK, and it’s one of the largest design firms in the US with 1800 team members. Since 1955, HOK has designed hundreds of major projects like the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in DC, Apple’s first major campus in Cupertino, the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas, Orioles Baseball Park in Baltimore, the expansion of Saarinen's Dulles Airport, the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport, DFW Airport in Dallas, and last but not least, the renovation of Joe Biden’s least favorite airport, LaGuardia. Wrapping up, a few minutes with architect Frank Harmon, reading from his book Native Places.
Nowhere in the world celebrates Modernism better than Palm Springs, California. Every February, they have a huge architecture and design festival called Modernism Week which actually lasts 11 days.
Today in the first of two shows about architecture-related movies taped at Modernism Week, host George Smart talks with filmmakers Jake and Tracey Gorst of Frey Part 2: The Architectural Interpreter, and later he visits with P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes, directors of the new Pierre Cardin film, House of Cardin.
Today on USModernist Radio it's a full slate of great guests: art collector, model collector, race car driver, softball player, and architect Ronnette Riley, project lead for the Lipstick Building in New York designed by Philip Johnson.
Later on, Virginia Faust talks about the venerable Lustron, the house of the future that didn't make it, plus special musical guest Leonardo with the world's only Lustron song, and a new feature - architect Frank Harmon reading from his new book of sketches and essays, Native Places.
Other than Frank Sinatra, there are few people who are so tightly woven into the spirit of mid-century culture than 1950's Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe. Sometime later this year, plans call for a nearly 30 foot tall statue of her in the famous blowing white dress to return to Palm Springs as a permanent home. In her day, Marilyn was as big as any celebrity you could name. She was involved with some of the most well-known men in the world: baseball great Joe Dimaggio, playwright Arthur Miller, and generally accepted nowadays, John F. Kennedy. And she has a connection to a very famous architect. Hosts George Smart and Tom Guild talk with three people who keep Marilyn’s legacy alive for the 21st century. First, it’s Sunny Thompson, who has been channeling Marilyn in her live shows and completely brings her back to life. Next, Greg Schreiner, who has one of the worlds largest collections of Marilyn’s costumes and also leads the annual memorial service in Los Angeles, and finally, Joshua Greene, son of photographer Milton Greene, who took some of Marilyn’s most memorable photos. Marilyn was, for a time, Joshua’s babysitter!
In a mid-century world way before Instagram, people kept up with the latest buildings primarily through architecture magazines. Although a few titles like Architecture Record are still going, there were many exceptional publications that in their heyday from 1945-1970 reached millions of readers across the US and the World. Today we welcome John Morris Dixon, the last editor of one of those great magazines, Progressive Architecture. Dixon has interviewed and written about just about every Modernist architect we’ve ever mentioned on the show, and his books include Paul Rudolph: Inspiration and Process in Architecture, Urban Spaces 1&2, Progressive Architecture’s Twenty Years of Design Awards, and Pencil Points Reader.
Craig Ellwood was one of the most exciting people in American architecture. He took Los Angeles by storm and no one since has fully captured his personal style or his incredible story - but that's on the way. Although he took structural engineering courses at UCLA, Ellwood was not a licensed architect, but that did not matter to him or to his clients. Ellwood was a true design genius. Ellwood could sell, too. He had a red Ferrari (among other great cars) and was a perfect fit with the celebrity culture of Los Angeles. He was a master of promotion. Derided by the architecture profession of which he was formally not a part, he rose to public fame when three of his houses were included in the iconic Case Study House series for Arts and Architecture Magazine. His houses are still incredibly prized today.
From poolside at the swanky Hotel Skylark, host George Smart interviews noted Ellwood restorer Barton Jahncke and his client, Ellwood owner Diane Bald, and later on George talks with architects of another Ellwood restoration, Joe Dangaran and Brett Woods.
Skidmore Owings and Merrill, which sounds like a law firm your uncle Mitch might work at, created international airports, stunningly tall skyscrapers, universities, flagship museums, and landmark corporate headquarters since the 1930’s. In its heyday it was the Amazon of design firms, one of the largest in the world, with projects such as the 1973 Sears/Willis Tower in Chicago, the 2010 Burj Khalifa in Dubai, international airport terminals in Chicago and Kansas City, Lever House, the 2013 World Trade Center, the new Penn Station, the Waldorf Astoria restoration, the first net-zero-energy school in New York City, and even the design of Moon Village, a concept for the first permanent lunar settlement. It's a global architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm, founded in Chicago by architects Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings and engineer John O. Merrill.
Today we talk about SOM with Nick Adams, author of Gordon Bunshaft and SOM: Building Corporate Modernism and architect, preservationist, and design writer Kate Reggev. Later on, George and Tom welcome returning special musical guest, jazz singer Valerie Wood.
Nowhere in the world celebrates Modernism better than Palm Springs, California. Every February, they have a huge architecture and design festival called Modernism Week, which actually lasts 11 days. This was the fifth year USModernist has been at Modernism Week, talking poolside at the USModernist Compound, aka the hip Hotel Skylark, with nearly all the keynote speakers, authors, and special guests. When modern-day Dorothy's kick their red ruby slippers together, they don’t go to Kansas, they land next to in Frank Sinatra’s pool in Palm Springs. Modernism Week is a dazzling spectacle of mid-century architecture, martinis, lectures, art galleries, shopping, nonprofit benefit events, architecture documentary premieres, amazing parties at incredible houses, brilliantly curated house tours, detailed art and architecture exhibits, and much more.
Today we kick off 2020 Modernism Week coverage with architect Daniel Libeskind, known for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany, the master plan for the World Trade Center reconstruction and memorial, and the Danish Jewish Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark. He’s one of the world’s most highly regarded architects and someone people can trust to work with projects of great meaning and significance, especially where loss in involved.
Next, host George Smart visits with the Queen of Palm Springs, the woman everyone wants to talk to by the pool, Nelda Linsk. Later a delightful chat with Alison Martino, producer, writer, reporter, preservationist, and a master chronicler of old Hollywood, in which she grew up as the daughter of singer Al Martino.
In a world before the internet, World’s Fairs were the killer app of the 19th and most of the 20th centuries. Countries would assemble at a central place for about 6 months and build pavilions, each sharing their nation’s technology, culture, and national sources of pride, symbols, heroes, and achievements. If you’ve ever been to Epcot at Disney World, you get the idea. There were two World's Fairs in New York about 25 years apart. Much of the World’s fair architecture was forward-thinking and Modernist, but only a few buildings on the New York fairgrounds survive today, some of them barely. We welcome two superfans who’ve been working over ten years to restore what’s left, Mitch Silverstein and Stephanie Bohn, both featured in the documentary Modern Ruin, produced by past podcast guest Matt Silva, detailing the site’s post-fair use, deterioration, and growing advocacy efforts.
Each fall, there’s a cool art and design gathering called WestEdge Design Fair in Santa Monica. It’s held in the Barker Hanger, an enormous space at the Santa Monica airport. This year, USModernist's George Smart moderated two panels with some of the most well-known designers from around America and the UK. What you’re about to hear is one of those panels, Epic Spaces and Favorite Places, with guests Tom Parker, Alison Pickart, David Thompson, John McClain, and Massimo Buster Minale. This is a rebroadcast of Josh Cooperman’s Convo by Design, the official podcast of WestEdge, which recorded the panel. Many thanks to Josh and WestEdge for allowing us to share this with you directly. Enjoy!
From London to Tokyo to Dubai, the skyscraper is a part of every modern city, but no city has done it better, or longer, than New York. Starting in the 1920's, the booming economy, use of steel, and advanced engineering took skyscrapers into reality for the first time. Hey, who wakes up one day and says "Hey, I want to create a museum"? Carol Willis does. In 1996, she founded and still runs the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan which explains the history, allure, and future of tall buildings - plus a new class of thin and incredibly expensive structures called supertall.
Host George Smart cashed in a few frequent flyer miles to report from New York City, doing a walk and talk around the innovatively designed COOKFOX architecture office with project leader Bethany Borel. Later on George visits author Anthony Alofsin, whose new book Wright and New York: the Making of America's Architect explores Frank Lloyd Wright’s years in the Big Apple.
What could be better than to make a living writing about Modernist architecture? Today on the show all the way from the UK, its author Dominic Bradbury, author of the new book Atlas of Mid-Century Modern Houses. Bradbury is a writer and freelance journalist specializing in architecture, design, real estate, and travel, writing over 20 over twenty books, at least one of which you have on your coffee table: Nordic Houses, Mid-Century Modern Complete, The Iconic House, The Iconic Interior, Off the Grid, Making House: Designers at Home, and his newest book the massive Atlas of Mid-Century Modern Houses. He writes for the Financial Times, The Telegraph, House & Garden, World of Interiors, Wallpaper, Vogue Living and various editions of Architectural Digest and Elle Decoration.
Sometimes the controversy about a building, particularly about a huge museum or government project, starts way before it opens or even before a Mayor, or a Governor, a Prime Minister, or even a Kardashian moves the first shovel of dirt. Today we welcome Susanna Sirefman, founder and president of Dovetail Design Strategists, an architect selection firm specializing in design competitions. Also with us, not by coincidence, Robby Johnston from Raleigh Architecture, a North Carolina firm thinking about entering national design competitions.
Most public projects in the US are chosen by a committee that reviews architects past projects. Entering a competition is a time-consuming task generating high-detail photos and renderings that while the winner may or may not get a huge commission, there are no promises and typically no compensation for the time spent entering. The carrot at the end of the process is what propels firms, small and large, to put in the time and expense towards what could be a career-defining iconic building with an eight- or nine-figure budget. What’s the future of competitions, and can small firms realistically compete?
Alysa Nahmias is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of the Los Angeles-based production company Ajna Films. Her directorial debut feature, Unfinished Spaces, co-directed with Benjamin Murray, won a 2012 Spirit Award, numerous festival prizes, and is in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In The New Bauhaus, the film's narrative weaves original interviews with archival footage, voiceover, and stylized filming of documents and artwork. The result is a new perspective view of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a man who was ahead of his time creating a philosophy of art and design education that has captured imaginations for nearly a century.
Akira Boch is an award-winning filmmaker and Director of the Media Arts Center at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. He has made over 50 short films, documentaries, and music videos. His latest film, Masters of Modern Design: The Art of the Japanese American Experience explores five second generation Japanese American artists—Ruth Asawa, George Nakashima, Isamu Noguchi, Gyo Obata, and S. Neil Fujita—following the ways in which their US internment camp experiences impacted their lives, influenced their art, and sent them on trajectories that eventually led to their changing the face of American culture with their immense talents.
Charles Gwathmey was a native of North Carolina and got interested in architecture at an early age. Charlie, as he was known, studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and at Yale University under Paul Rudolph, then went into partnership with Richard Henderson and later Robert Siegel. Over a career spanning five decades, Charlie and Bob designed some of the country's most iconic Modernist houses (for celebrities and CEO's such as Jerry Seinfeld, Steven Spielberg, and Michael Dell) and buildings such as the Guggenheim addition and the US Mission to the UN, both in New York. Gwathmey died in 2009 but the firm lives on as Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman.
Today we talk with Gwathmey’s daughter Annie Gwathmey, an actress, producer, and teacher known for films such as Romeo Must Die and My Father's House. She attended Cornell and Sarah Lawrence College and joins us from LA.
With us in the studio, guest co-host Paige Wagoner Claassen, an architectural historian whose Instagram architecture feed Claasshaus has happy fans all over the world.
Fire up the car or start booking plane tickets, as today we’re talking about two amazing Modernist house museums you’ll definitely want to visit, one in New York City, and one in Los Angeles, with guest Executive Directors: Kelvin Dickinson of the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation and the Modulightor Building in New York, last home of architect Paul Rudolph; and Lucia Dewey Atwood of the Charles and Ray Eames House in Los Angeles.
This is the third year USModernist Radio has been part of the Architecture and Design Film Festival in New York. Every fall, the stars, producers, and creators gather to premiere their latest documentaries. ADFF Executive Director Kyle Bergman curates visually wonderful, thought-provoking, and faithfully documented films that capture the brilliance of architects, artists, and significant buildings.
Host George Smart talks with two of the filmmakers from this year’s festival: Lene Borch Hansen, of the movie The Man & The Architect - Jørn Utzon; and Britni Harris, of the movie Goff.
In this bonus show, George gets locked out of Tom's studio but still manages to record and edit an interview with PJ Letofsky, producer of the documentary Neutra: Survival Through Design. Featuring historian Barbara Lamprecht, son Raymond Neutra, son Dion Neutra who just passed away, Norman Foster, Moshe Safdie, and of course -- Alan Hess. Neutra's houses are still highly prized 50 to 90 years later, and his legacy of incredibly beautiful and functional design is still wildly popular. George kicks off things with PJ talking about his publicity tour for the movie.
Amy Walton is from Texas, where she spent 15 years managing nonprofits like the North Texas Food Bank and the Jewish Family Service. Last year, she launched modTEXAS, an initiative to draw attention to Texas modernism and celebrate the people and institutions working to preserve it. Building a coalition of over a dozen nonprofits using social media, modTEXANS have shared thousands of images of midcentury design and architecture that can literally be mapped across the state.
When you think of Albuquerque, New Mexico, you might think of southwest adobe design, or maybe that TV show In Plain Sight which filmed there for five years, but you’re certainly not thinking of Modernist architecture – yet. Thea Haver is hoping to change that as co-founder and director of Modern Albuquerque.
Co-host Paige Wagoner Claassen is an architectural historian with the popular Instagram feed Claasshaus, seeking out meaning, beauty, and significance in buildings and history in objects. Co-host Wayne Pond's melodious voice hosted an interview show called Soundings based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina from 1980 to 1997, interviewing journalists, poets, novelists, documentary film makers, musicians, governors, members of Congress, and tech leaders about their work in the arts, education, ethics, literature, religion, politics, music, philosophy, and even architecture. The shows live on at at the National Humanities Center iTunes site.
Welcome to 2020! In our ongoing quest to seek out other architecture podcasts, we’ve talked with hosts such as Frances Anderton, Donna Sink, Steve Chung, Josh Cooperman, David+Marina, and Debbie Millman. Today we talk with Bob Borson, creator of the most visited privately-maintained architectural blog in the world, Life of an Architect, which as of two years ago is also a podcast. We first encountered Bob’s blog in 2012 when he put out a wonderful series of hilarious architecture Christmas cards!
Shhh! George broke into Tom's studio late at night to bring you two bonus interviews from 2019. Happy new year!
Host George Smart met today's guests at a LA party USModernist Radio threw last year at Neutra's Lovell House. Lyra Kilston is a writer and editor focused on architecture, design, art, urbanism, with publication in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, Next City, Artforum, Wired, TIME, Art in America, and ICON. She is an editor for the Getty Museum, a consulting editor for Hyperallergic, and her first book is Sun Seekers: The Cure of California. Josh Gorrell is a preservationist who worked to save Rudolph Schindler’s Van Dekker house, declared a historic landmark in 2010. He’s either, um, housesitting or holding the occupants hostage at the Lovell Health house, Richard Neutra’s iconic Los Angeles creation that ushered in the California health craze.
Stopping by the studio, the enchanting jazz vocalist Valerie Wood.
Ron Friedman graduated in architecture from Carnegie Mellon University. After working for a few years as an architect, he came to his senses and started writing and performing stand-up comedy. He was spotted by Dean Martin and Danny Kaye which launched a career writing for countless TV and variety shows, over 700 hours of beloved prime-time TV that you know and probably love, including The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Vegas, and Fantasy Island. If you’re younger than 45, you’ll know the G.I. Joe series and of course, the epic animated show Transformers for which Ron wrote 64 shows. He worked with the legendary Stan Lee to create The Marvel Action Hour. He drafted the episode of Happy Days that introduced The Fonz, and he wrote the episode of Bewitched that introduced Uncle Arthur played by Paul Lynde. His new memoir is called I Killed Optimus Prime.
Born in Boston, architect Eliot Noyes graduated Harvard University. After working for Boston's Coolidge Shepley Bulfinch & Abbott, he left to work for Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Awarded a Wheelwright Traveling Fellowship, he toured the US visiting Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater and Taliesin; Eliel Saarinen's Cranbrook Academy of Art; and Richard Neutra houses. After returning briefly to Gropius and Breuer, he became the first director of the Industrial Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, launching the careers of Charles and Ray Eames. Noyes redefined how design was perceived inside major corporations such as IBM and Mobil. He is recognized for designing World's Fair pavilions in Brussels, Belgium, San Antonio, Montreal, and New York. He was one of the noted Harvard Five architects, which included Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, John Johansen, and Landis Gores.
Our guest Fred Noyes is the son of Eliot Noyes. Fred Noyes worked for Graham Gund and Cambridge Seven and for over thirty years has run his own firm designing everything from hospitals to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s summer White House on Martha’s Vineyard. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Education from the Boston Architectural College in 2007 and lectures on architecture, biology, visual studies, and biochemistry. He owns the Noyes House II where he grew up, a house that he put under a preservation easement -- which protects it forever.
There’s a building at JFK airport in New York that people have been talking about for almost 60 years. At one time, it was the world's most modern airport terminal, bringing the Jet Age fully into public consciousness. This building had no peer; and its creator, Eero Saarinen, was one of the most visionary architects in the world. For years the airline TWA (later absorbed by American Airlines) used it as a glamorous gateway to the world, sending off passengers in an era people dressed up to fly and there was no such thing as airport security. The volume of passengers increased so much that the building had to be abandoned. After a few decades in mothballs, and dangerously close to demolition, Saarinen’s TWA terminal has been meticulously restored and expanded, with a world-class hotel adjacent and even better, a massive underground conference facility you’d never know was there.
Host George Smart was in New York for a huge gala opening inside that underground conference center. He talked with Richard Southwick, project partner in charge with restoration architects Beyer Blinder Belle. But first, George sat down in Los Angeles at the iconic Beverly Hilton with Saarinen’s son, Eric Saarinen. Then George is back in New York with architects Anne Marie Lubrano and Lea Ciaverra, of the not-surprisingly named firm Lubrano Ciaverra, for the brilliant new TWA hotel, you know, he one with the massive underground conference facility.
Any fan of Modernism has DWELL Magazine somewhere in their house. It’s a venerable but relatively recent publication, started in 2000 by Lara Hedberg Deam in San Francisco. She’s still the owner, and like a winning NFL coach, she’s been stocking the team over nearly 20 years with winning players like Karrie Jacobs, Michela O'Connor Abrams, Amanda Dameron, and former podcast guest Alison Arieff.
With a motto of “at home in the Modern World,” DWELL helped re-energize a terrazzo (that’s our new collective noun) of Modern movements: small houses, modern houses, green houses, sustainable house, micro houses, and prefab houses. Today we go remote with host George Smart in New York, where he sits down with Bill Hanley, Editor and Chief of DWELL since February 2019.
Hanley is a New York City-based writer, editor, and media producer, focusing on design, art, and urbanism. He was previously the digital director at Surface magazine, senior digital editor at Architectural Record, news editor at ARTnews, staff writer at Rhizome, and editor at ArtInfo.
In the lovely town of New Canaan CT, from the 1940s through the 1990s, no one was more influential than architect Philip Johnson. His internationally-famous Glass House celebrated its 70th anniversary recently with a huge outdoor party and aerial performance by Philippe Petit, known for his daring and highly unauthorized wirewalk between the World Trade Center towers pre-2001. New Canaan is full of mid-century Modernist architecture from Johnson, Eliot Noyes, Marcel Breuer, John Hedjuk, and John Johansen, collectively known as the Harvard Five, plus other architects such as Edward Durell Stone, Frank Lloyd Wright, and James Evans. Host George Smart sat down inside the Johnson-designed 1953 Wiley House with Inger Stringfellow and Cristina Ross.
Frank Lloyd Wright, now 60 years after his death, remains the most well-known architect in America, perhaps the world. Notorious for his ego, which was matched only by his genius and talent, Wright would be delighted to be so this famous for so long. Wright would say, and he did, that he was the greatest architect ever, and for many, he was and still is.
Roland Reisley was only 26 when he became Wright’s client for a small house. Now Reisley is one of Wright's last living clients, still in the same lovely house in upstate New York, a small colony of Wright houses known as Usonia. The Usonian houses were the prototype for small affordable houses across America in a post-war time when affordable housing was needed. Unfortunately, the Usonians were not particularly economical nor small, but they remain beautiful designs that people rarely want to leave. Our George Smart was on the road in New York and sat down with Reisley this past summer.
Lord Peter Palumbo is a developer, art collector, car collector, wine collector, architecture collector and Conservative life peer based in the UK. He was educated at Eton and Worcester College, Oxford, a star athlete who played polo with Prince Charles. He first met Mies van her Rohe in the 1960’s and spent much of the next 30 years trying to get one of his buildings built. In 1972, he purchased the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe in Plano, Illinois and in 1986 he bought Frank Lloyd Wright’s Kentuck Knob near Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.
Architect John Lautner of Los Angeles was incredibly ahead of his time. Over 50 years, Lautner blurred the boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces, between nature and architecture. He carried out 144 of his designs, 103 of which are still standing, mostly around Los Angeles, and all highly prized. Two architects in the Netherlands set out to personally discover not just a few of his projects - but ALL of them. Jan-Richard Kikkert and Tycho Saariste's new book, Lautner A-Z, has dedication and commitment and sheer perserverance to get inside almost every Lautner building.
One of the best 80s films is, the envelope please, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Here's the plot: near the end of the school year, high school senior Ferris Bueller (played by Matthew Broderick) fakes being sick to stay home. His parents believe him, though his sister Jeanie (played by Jennifer Grey, the baby you don’t back into a corner) is not convinced. Ferris persuades his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) to help lure Ferris' girlfriend (Mia Sara) out of school and let them use his father's prized 1961 Ferrari. Spoiler: that Ferrari tumbles out of a really cool Modernist house, much to the chagrin of Cameron and his dad. Our pal Bob Langford, who pretty much knows every line in the movie, drops by to help us examine this cultural icon with guest Meghann Salamasick, who with her husband Chris are the owners of the that now-famous Modernist house. Later in the show, with apologies to Wayne Newton, it's George and Bob and Tom serenading Meghann.
Returning podcast guest Pierluigi Serraino is an architect and author whose book Modernism Rediscovered contributed to the huge re-emergence of interest in the architecture we all know and love. He has written books on Eero Saarinen, NorCalMod: Icons of Northern California Modernism, California Captured with past podcast guests Emily Bills and Sam Lubell, and his newest book co-authored with Erica Stoller, Ezra Stoller: A Photographic History of Modern American Architecture.
Erica Stoller is the director of Esto, an agency representing architectural photographers and managing a massive archive of related images related to the architecture photography of her father, Ezra Stoller. One of very best photographers of mid-Century Modernism, his work lives on in the esto archive used by scholars, photo researchers, and publishers worldwide. In addition to running ESTO, Erica is a photographer and an artist, making wall sculpture of repurposed industrial materials like plastic plumbing tubes, foam insulation, parachute cord, cable ties, bead chain, wire rope and metal connectors.
A graduate in Architecture from Oxford, Professor James Stevens Curl is known for scholarship, penetrating criticisms, lucidity of style, and holding his nose at the stench of Modernism, of which he is definitely not a fan. He’s probably rather be down at the Groaning Board hoisting a pint, but we’re thrilled to have him talk about his new award-winning book, Making Dystopia:The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism, in which he takes apart the Modernist movement piece by piece! However, he makes a good argument for how the wider modern movement in the 1950's (highways, cars, planes, not just architecture) has harmed the planet and the community way of life.
Over the last few year, we’ve been checking out design and architecture podcasts from around America. We've had Frances Anderton of DnA, Debbie Millman of Design Matters, Josh Cooperman of Convo by Design, and David and Marina of Midnight Charrette. Today we welcome two new friends who keep the public's design fire going with their interesting and popular podcasts.
Architect Steve Chung is based in Boston, where the good clam chowder lives, focused on residential and hospitality projects. Steve graduated in architecture from Harvard and interned with Richard Meier in New York, worked for Machado Silvetti in Boston and collaborated with designer Philippe Starck. He was the host and creator of the PBS series Cool Spaceswhich ran in 2014 and is currently co-host with Doug Patt on the Design Your Dream Home podcast.
Architect Donna Sink is the host of the Archinect podcast with guests we know and love such as Sekou Cooke and David and Marina from Midnight Charette, plus our buddy Rusty Long from right here in North Carolina. A graduate of the University of Arizona and also Cranbrook, which is like a Jedi school for architecture, her career began at Atkin Olshin Shade in Philadelphia in historic preservation. She joined Rowland Design in 2017 and was President of the Indianapolis AIA.
New on USModernist Radio - Three Amigos: Tom Kundig, Frank Harmon, and Marlon Blackwell. Not only are they the best of friends but they are award-winning rockstars of Modernist residential architecture.
Tom Kundig is principal with Olson Kundig Architects and came to national attention with 1998’s Studio House and in 2002, the Chicken Point Cabin. Tom’s honors include the Cooper Hewitt 2008 National Design Award, eleven national AIA design awards, too many Washington AIA awards to count, and over 450 feature articles worldwide. He is the author of Tom Kundig Houses, Tom Kundig Houses 2, and Tom Kundig Works.
Frank Harmon grew up in North Carolina and worked for North Carolina’s Ed Loewenstein and New York’s Richard Meier, teaching at Auburn University and NC State University’s College of Design. He’s received over 60 design awards, the most ever for a North Carolina firm. Frank is the author of the book Native Places: Drawing as a Way to See and writes the Native Places blog.
Marlon Blackwell is the author of An Architecture of the Ozarks: The Works of Marlon Blackwell and has taught at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville since 1992, serving as head of the architecture department for six years. His firm won more than 120 design awards and he received the 2012 Architecture Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
USModernist Radio is sponsored by Angela Roehl, your special real estate agent for Modernist houses. Listen via iTunes. Listen on Android devices and PC's. View past and future show descriptions.
Today we wrap up coverage of Modernism Week 2019 by honoring architect Paul Rudolph. 2018 was the 100th anniversary of architect Paul Rudolph's birth and his work lives on to even high acclaim than when he was alive. Rudolph got on the national radar through innovative Modernist houses in Sarasota, Florida. Later he created masterworks in concrete and steel in New York, New England, and late in his career Singapore and Hong Kong. Host George Smart talks to two big Rudolph fans, returning guest Sarasota Architecture Foundation President Christopher Wilson and the lead moderator of the Modernism Week Paul Rudolph tribute, Dick Burkett.
Today we welcome back Justin Shubow, President of the National Civic Art Society, a non-profit dedicated to promoting the classical tradition in public art and architecture. President Trump appointed him in 2018 to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a federal agency which oversees the design and construction of government buildings and memorials in Washington DC. Shubow is the author of The Gehry Towers over Eisenhower, a 150-page critique of the Eisenhower Memorial, a battle he sort of won, sort of lost against architect Frank Gehry. With a background in philosophy and law, he has taught at Michigan and Yale and speaks on architecture at places like the US State Department, Baylor University, Colorado College, Hamilton College, and the University of Virginia.
Palm Springs has a huge architecture event called Modernism Week every February. It’s a fascinating array of architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and the occasional plastic surgery gone awry. Host George Smart was there earlier this year talking with nearly all the speakers, authors, and special guests who make the week (actually 11 days) a blast!
Architecture documentaries visually capture the spirit and stories of great Modernist buildings in ways not possible through books and photos. USModernist Radio welcomes architect Dion Neutra and producer Devon Chivvis to our poolside studio at the swanky Hotel Skylark. Neutra stars in PJ Letofsky's new documentary Neutra: Survival Through Design that premiered at Modernism Week; and Devon Chivvis shares the latest progress on her exciting new documentary, The Harvard Five - about the architects that settled in (and unsettled the locals) in New Canaan, Connecticut: John Johansen, Marcel Breuer, Landis Gores, Phillip Johnson and Eliot Noyes, transforming Modernist design and influencing a generation of architects. Spoiler alert: she grew up in one.
In an interview recorded at REX in Brooklyn, New York, George Smart sat down with architect Josh Ramus. The Huffington Post named him one of the five greatest architects under 50. Wallpaper Magazine described him as one of the world's most influential young architects. Esquire Magazine dubbed him the young saviour of American architecture. Icon Magazine called him one of the 20 Essential Young Architects. And Popular Mechanics said “Josh who? Is he that cold fusion guy?”
Graduating from Harvard in Architecture in 1996, Ramus worked for Rem Koolhaas before forming his own practice, REX, in 2006. Like many famous architects, Charles Gwathmey and Richard Meier come to mind, his mom helped him get the project that rocket-launched his career. He has been a Visiting Professor at Yale, Rice, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, and Syracuse. And in his spare time, he trained for the Olympics!
Palm Springs has a huge architecture event called Modernism Week every February. It’s a fascinating array of architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and the occasional plastic surgery gone awry. Host George Smart was there earlier this year talking with nearly all the speakers, authors, and special guests who make the week (actually 11 days) a blast!
Authors Michael Stern and Alan Hess join us poolside at the swanky Hotel Skylark to discuss their new book: Hollywood Modern: Houses of the Stars. They uniquely capture the glamour of each star and how their personality, even their appearance, matches the house they chose. From the Johnny Carson House in Malibu to the ultramodern Gary Cooper House in Holmby Hills, these houses curate our brains just like the movies do. Later on, we welcome back the delightful celebrity expert Lindsay Blake, creator of the hugely popular movie location blog Iamnotastalker. Spoiler alert: she’s quite the stalker!
Despite enormous success, architect Minoru Yamasaki’s reputation declined in the 1970's with the negative public reception of the World Trade Center in New York and the spectacular failure of St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe public housing project.
Author Dale Gyure is associate chair and professor of Architecture at Lawrence Technological University. His most recent book, Minoru Yamasaki: Humanist Architecture for a Modernist World, is the first to closely examine Yamasaki's work and life.
Palm Springs has a huge architecture event called Modernism Week every February. It’s a fascinating array of architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and the occasional plastic surgery gone awry. Host George Smart was there earlier this year talking with nearly all the speakers, authors, and special guests who make the week (actually 11 days) a blast!
The photographers documenting the mid-century movement provide us a wealth of information, perspective, and enjoyment, capturing not only amazing houses but the lives and careers of their owners and architects. From poolside at the swanky Hotel Skylark, you’ll meet authors Emily Bills and Pierluigi Serraino talking about one largely undiscovered Modernist photographer, Marvin Rand. Their new book along with Sam Lubell, California Captured, puts Rand front and center in the same world class as Julius Shulman and Ezra Stoller. Later we join photographer Andrew Pielage about his quest to shoot every Frank Lloyd Wright building in the world.
If you’ve been listening closely, you know our special series called Children of Genius, featuring Susan Saarinen, daughter of Eero Saarinen, Raymond Neutra, son of Richard Neutra, Emily Ain, daughter of Gregory Ain, and Randy Koenig, son of Pierre Koenig.Today we're thrilled to talk with Charlee Deaton, daughter of architect Charles Deaton. You can also see it from the nearby Interstate. The Sleeper House got world-famous through the Woody Allen movie of the same name in 1973. Deaton’s projects included the Wyoming National Bank in Casper and the Harry S. Truman Sports Complex in Kansas City. And in case you're wondering, and we know you are if you saw the movie, the house's orgasmatron is not a real thing!
Plus, dropping by the studio, great mid-century jazz from musical guests the Luca Colonna Trio. There's something special about these guys - listen for more!
Palm Springs has a huge architecture event called Modernism Week every February. It’s a fascinating array of architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and the occasional plastic surgery gone awry. Host George Smart was there earlier this year talking with nearly all the speakers, authors, and special guests who make the week (actually 11 days) a blast!
Today USModernist welcomes two California architects building new Modernist houses and one expert sharing how Modernism started: Joel Turkel founded Turkel Design and created NextHouse, a series of prefab modern homes still marketed by the fine folks at Deck House. In 2014, in an exclusive collaboration with Dwell Magazine, Joel launched the Axiom Series, a line of modern houses that combine sleek modern design with all the benefits of prefab construction. Now he lives in one!
Anthony Poon is an architect, concert pianist, artist, and author. He created new ways to build and promote Modernist home developments while maintaining design integrity and construction quality. His entertaining talk at Modernism Week was about architects in popular culture - TV and movies. There are many more than you might think!
Wrapping up, we talk with Jacques Caussin, associated with Modernism Week from the very beginning and this year’s speaker on how Modernism got started and made itself popular in the US.
Debbie Millman is the founder and host of the pioneering, award-winning, long-running, and successful podcast, Design Matters. Going into her 14th year, Millman has interviewed over 400 designers, artists, and others in the creative culture such as Milton Glaser, Malcolm Gladwell, Barbara Kruger, Massimo Vignelli, Marina Abramovic, Thomas Kail, Laurie Anderson, Shepard Fairey, and Steven Heller. She’s a polymath of designer, artist, writer, educator, curator, speaker, and CEO. Design Matters won the 2011 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, a Webby for Best Individual Episode, and in 2015 Apple designated it one of the best overall podcasts on iTunes. She is the author of six books, and her art has been included in the Boston Biennale, the Chicago Design Museum, Anderson University, and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art.
Palm Springs has a huge architecture event called Modernism Week every February. It’s a fascinating array of architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and the occasional plastic surgery gone awry. Host George Smart was there earlier this year talking with nearly all the speakers, authors, and special guests who make the week (actually 11 days) a blast!
You remember books, right? Those things we had in our hands to read before Kindle? George and Tom welcome author Adele Cygelman, whose newest book is Arthur Elrod: Desert Modern Design. Elrod was one of the country’s most famous interior designers and his John Lautner-designed Palm Springs house became a celebrity (and still is) from an appearance in the James Bond movie Diamonds are Forever. Later on, we move down the road to Rancho Mirage, an oasis of Modernism that’s the subject of a new book, Mod Mirage, by Melissa Riche with photography by Jim Riche. Rancho Mirage had the very first developments on golf courses—a model that soon adopted around the world. Famous residents included old Hollywood’s Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Doris Day, and Bob Hope.
Kinston is about as typical Eastern North Carolina as you can get. They have lots of barbeque, a minor league baseball team that’s pretty good, they support what’s left of the tobacco industry, and they keep up the CSS Neuse, one of the last Confederate ironclad ships, although Donald Trump is considering restoring it to attack Canada.
Kinston never had a really great restaurant, but that changed when chef Vivian Howard and artist Ben Knight came to town in 2006 from New York and opened Chef & the Farmer and later the Boiler Room and Benny’s Big Time. Then there was their PBS TV series A Chef's Life, which won two Daytime Emmys and a Peabody award. They are also Modernist homeowners! We first came across this talented couple when their Modernist house in Deep Run NC won a George Matsumoto Prize for North Carolina residential Modernist design. Host George Smart and guest co-host, NCModernist's Rebekah Laney, chat with Ben in the studio and Vivian from her car!
Palm Springs has a huge architecture event called Modernism Week every February. It’s a fascinating array of architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and the occasional plastic surgery gone awry. Host George Smart was there earlier this year talking with nearly all the speakers, authors, and special guests who make the week (actually 11 days) a blast!
Music is an important part of Modernism Week. Host George Smart talks with singer-songwriter AJ Lambert, who just released a debut album and performed to rave reviews at Modernism Week; see if you can guess the Secret Word before George says it. Plus Joan and Gary Gand of the Gand Band, owners of one of the sweetest mid-century houses in Palm Springs and known across the Coachella valley for their swinging Chicago-inspired blues.
Over the last few months, we’ve been checking out fellow design and architecture podcasts from around America. We've had Frances Anderton of DnA and Josh Cooperman of Convo by Design – and today we’re excited to welcome the hosts of Midnight Charrette.
Co-host Marina Bourderonnet (bor-dare-ro-nay) grew up in France, training at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Architecture with a Bachelor of Architecture degree. She speaks four languages and loves, we recently learned, suspenders.
Co-host David Lee grew up near Disneyland and teaches architecture at Woodbury University. He also went to school in France, with a degree in Music and Architecture from the American Art School at Fontainebleau.
Marina and Dave’s wideranging repartee with guests and between themselves does indeed cover the known spectrum of human experience from the credibility of Aquaman -- to why you can’t buy a simple cactus plant in Palm Springs.
Palm Springs has a huge architecture event called Modernism Week every February. It’s a fascinating array of architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and the occasional plastic surgery gone awry. Host George Smart was there earlier this year talking with nearly all the speakers, authors, and special guests who make the week (actually 11 days) a blast!
Today George talks with author and longtime Modernist researcher Christine Madrid French, who with Marty Hylton did the first comprehensive survey of Florida mid-century Modernist architecture, accessible here; plus he chats visiting Australian Modernist Amy Jarvis of Canberra; and finally a talk with Ken Topper of Richard Neutra's iconic Lovell Health House, which you’ll remember from the movie LA Confidential.
Architect Philip Johnson’s father invested 100 years ago in ALCOA, the huge aluminum company, which Johnson a millionaire in his '20s. Before he became an architect, however, Johnson organized a landmark exhibition on International Style at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932 which introduced important Modernist architects as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe. He went on to get formal education in design but by then his reputation as a kingmaker of architects was firmly established. He is regarded as one of the first architects to achieve celebrity status, as much for his design evangelism and connections than for his buildings. He died in 2005 at the age of 98.
Today host George Smart with co-host Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell welcome Mark Lamster, an award-winning architectural critic of the Dallas Morning News and a professor of architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington. For nearly a decade, Lamster studied Johnson’s correspondence, archives, and even his FBI file for a new biography titled The Man in the Glass House. He has been a contributing editor to Architectural Review, Design Observer, ID, Architect, Architectural Record, Metropolis, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Palm Springs has a huge architecture event called Modernism Week every February. It’s a fascinating array of architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and the occasional plastic surgery gone awry. Host George Smart was there earlier this year talking with nearly all the speakers, authors, and special guests who make the week (actually 11 days) a blast!
Today from poolside at the swanky Hotel Skylark, George Smart welcomes one of the show's favorite guests - it's Ms. Modernism, Annalisa Capurro from Australia, who has logged more Modernism Week miles than anyone in the world. Next, the founder of the Palm Springs Modern Committee, Peter Moruzzi. And we wrap up with Modernism Week CEO Chris Mobley. Learn about how to build one of the most successful Modernist events in the world - and a super toilet village!
Today host George Smart and special guest cohost Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell dives into two Modernist house museums by internationally famous architects: Richard Neutra’s VDL house in LA and Philip Johnson’s Glass house in New Canaan CT.
Richard Neutra became one of the most important architects in the world. In fact, Time Magazine featured Neutra on its cover and ranked him second only to Frank Lloyd Wright. Our first guest is Sarah Lorenzen, Director of the Neutra's VDL house in Los Angeles, a place where he experimented with new Modernist building materials and techniques.
Philip Johnson was an architect but he thrived on being a kingmaker to the growing Modernist movement. He organized the profoundly influential exhibition on International Style at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932 which introduced important Modernist architects such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe. Joining the conversation is Cole Akers of the Glass House, former home to Johnson and his partner David Whitney in New Canaan CT.
Palm Springs has a huge architecture event called Modernism Week every February. It’s a fascinating array of architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and the occasional plastic surgery gone awry. Host George Smart was there earlier this year talking with nearly all the speakers, authors, and special guests who make the week (actually 11 days) a blast!
Craig Ellwood was one of the most exciting people in American architecture. He took Los Angeles by storm and no one since has fully captured his personal style or his incredible story - but that's on the way. Although he took structural engineering courses at UCLA, Ellwood was not a licensed architect, but that did not matter to him or to his clients. Ellwood was a true design genius. Ellwood could sell, too. He had a red Ferrari (among other great cars) and was a perfect fit with the celebrity culture of Los Angeles. He was a master of promotion. Derided by the architecture profession of which he was formally not a part, he rose to public fame when three of his houses were included in the iconic Case Study House series of Arts and Architecture Magazine. His houses are still incredibly prized today.
From poolside at the swanky Hotel Skylark, Host George Smart interviews Ellwood’s daughter, Erin Ellwood; his partner, architect Jim Tyler; producer Maria Demopoulos who’s working on a new feature film about Ellwood, and expert Ellwood restorer Barton Jahncke, who has brought more than one ailing house gloriously back to life.
New York City architects Abby Suckle and William Singer are the authors of Cocktails and Conversations: Dialogues in Architectural Design. AIA New York’s Center for Architecture has a great Friday night format: invite people to to hear a famous architect paired with a master bartender who creates a custom cocktail to share with a thirsty audience. Architects have included David Adjaye, Jeanne Gang, Peter Gluck, Frank Harmon, Tom Kundig, Daniel Libeskind, Eric Owen Moss, Billie Tsien, and Tod Williams, among many others. Host George Smart spoke with Abby and William at the Long Island Bar, 110 Atlantic Avenue, in Brooklyn. Joining them were David Moo and Toby Cecchini (inventor of the Cosmopolitan!), master bartenders behind all the cocktail creations.
About a month later, George and co-host Tom Guild met Australian Phillip Jones, the Martini Whisperer, poolside at the swanky Hotel Skylark in Palm Springs. For over a dozen years Jones worked as a fine dining manager and ran restaurants and events companies around the world. Then he created a website for lovers of Martinis, craft spirits and cocktail culture with an Australian point of view. In 2015 he gave the first ever TED talk on the Martini. And as he was leaving the Eau du Vie bar in Melbourne one fateful night, a lovely gang of actresses approached ....
Today we kick off Modernism Week coverage with internationally known architect Moshe (mo-shay) Safdie. He’s been famous for over 50 years for many brilliant buildings; first as architect for Habitat 67 in Montreal, in the 2000’s as architect for the Marina Bay Sands, that crazy rich Singapore hotel featured in the movie Crazy rich Asians; and for a special small chapel you might not know about. Safdie won the 2019 Wolf Prize in Architecture and his other honors include the AIA Gold Medal, Canada’s Royal Architectural Institute Gold Medal, and The Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement. Host George Smart talked with Safdie from the somewhat noisy atrium lobby of the Hyatt Palm Springs.
USModernist has documented thousands of mid-century modernist houses, especially in Los Angeles. One name that kept popping up when those mid-century moderns needed renovation is Los Angeles architect Barbara Bestor. She’s referred to as the unofficial Mayor of Silver Lake, an area full of great Modernist houses.
She also has a robust commercial practice, including the Beats Electronics Headquarters, the Nasty Gal Headquarters, Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea, Ashes + Diamonds Winery and Event Center and the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. She has taught architecture at Harvard, UCLA, and now at Woodbury University School of Architecture where she is executive director of the university’s Julius Shulman Institute. She is author of Bohemian Modern, Living in Silver Lake. In 2017 she was elected to the AIA's College of Fellows, which is like making the Baseball Hall of Fame. And she got married in a fantastic Modernist venue that will make you super-jealous.
Most people refer to architect Mies van der Rohe as Mies, which puts him into that rare club of people known by their first names, like Cher or Sting or Wynonna. Born in Germany, Mies was into totally architect Adolf Loos -- who famously declared that ornament is a crime and pursued unadorned Modernist design to represent the new era of technology and production. Mies got worldwide attention with two projects, the Barcelona Pavilion and the Villa Tugenhat. He joined the avant-garde Bauhaus school as director of architecture and left Germany in 1937 to head up the architecture school at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He designed many buildings on that campus including Crown Hall for the School of Architecture. Along with Gropius and Lecorbusier, Mies is widely regarded as one of the masters of Modernist architecture. Mies died fifty years ago in 1969. One of this three daughters was named Marianne, and her son became a talented architect in his own right.
Dirk Lohan, grandson of Mies van der Rohe, was born near Berlin in 1938 and left Germany to study with his grandfather at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Later, he worked with Mies designing projects as the New National Gallery in Berlin, the IBM office building in Chicago and The Toronto Dominion Centre. He's known for the renovated Soldier Field, the original McDonald's campus (where he witnessed the first McNuggets), and many other buildings. He served on the Board of the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Board of Directors of Chicago Maritime Museum, and not surprisingly, the Mies van der Rohe Society.
Architect Victor Sidy was Dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin with campuses in Scottsdale, Arizona and Spring Green, Wisconsin. He was a vocal advocate for saving Frank Lloyd Wright houses and buildings and for walkable community development. In 2015 he returned to private practice but is still involved with one special Frank Lloyd Wright house in Phoenix, the David and Gladys Wright House, which father Frank designed for his son. The house has been on a rollercoaster in recent years, doomed one moment, saved the next, in limbo the next.
Historian Alison King is founder of Modern Phoenix and is Associate Professor of Design at The Art Institute of Phoenix. Since 2003 she has published Arizona's largest website for midcentury architecture, ModernPhoenix.net, and she hosts an annual home tour and the always interesting Modern Phoenix Week. Alison gave USModernist a wonderful tour last November of both residential and commercial modernist buildings, culminating in a trip to the David and Gladys Wright House.
Host George Smart interviewed Victor and Alison in the lobby of the Embassy Suites Hotel right off Central Avenue, just a few blocks up from Will Bruder’s Burton Barr Phoenix Central Library. By then it was happy hour, and of course we didn’t want to break protocol, so when in Phoenix, do as the Phoenicians do. Cheers!
USModernist took 25 fans of the podcast to tour Phoenix, Arizona last November. Phoenix is the home of the Chimichanga, which Tucson disputes, but more importantly for us, the city is home to some really great Modernist architecture. We saw the Musical Instrument Museum, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, Paulo Soleri’s Cosanti and Arcosanti, Wright’s First Christian Church, and the David and Gladys Wright House, among many other amazing buildings.
One of these was Phoenix Central Library, designed by Arizona’s Will Bruder. Largely self-trained, Bruder apprenticed with Paolo Soleri in woodwork, metal work, and masonry and contributed to Soleri's book Arcology. After graduating from college in 1969, Bruder apprenticed with Gunnar Birkerts, assisting in design of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. He opened his first studio in 1974 and in 1987 was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Host George Smart interviewed Bruder in the lobby of the Embassy Suites right off Central Avenue, just a few blocks up from his Phoenix Central Library.
Ah, Cape Cod, the arm-shaped stretch of Massachusetts where Boston goes in the summer. The sun. The ocean. The traffic. The clam chowder. The summer theatre productions. And best of all, except for perhaps the clam chowder, the modern architecture by Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, and others. There are more than 100 modernist houses representing a little-known treasure map of residential architecture. Our guest Peter McMahon is Principal of PM Design. Peter curated an exhibition on Cape Cod Modernist architecture for the Provincetown Art Museum. This led to the creation of the unique and highly effective Cape Cod Modern House Trust, which documents and preserves these houses and makes them available for the public to stay in. His own summer house in Wellfleet MA was published in House Beautiful and Outside and he is co-author with Christine Cipriani of Cape Cod Modern: Mid-Century Architecture and Community on the Outer Cape.
Every fall, the New York Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF) premieres the best new documentaries of the year. Host George Smart was on the scene talking with the people behind the new movies.
Ultan Guilfoyle’s award-winning films have been shown on PBS and HBO in the US and the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 in the UK. He is author of two books about design, and with Sydney Pollack, Guilfoyle produced Sketches of Frank Gehry. His latest film is Frank Gehry: Building Justice where architect Gehry, philanthropist George Soros, and students at SCI-ARC and Yale re-design prison architecture for the complex social, political, racial, and aesthetic issues behind incarceration.
Paul Clemence is co-producer with Aksel Stasny of the film Two Pianos. His book on Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House remains the most complete photo documentation of that iconic design, and his many photographs have appeared in Metropolis, ArchDaily, Architizer, Casa Vogue Brasil, and his own blog Archi-photo with nearly 1M followers worldwide. Two Pianos is about the Italian architect Renzo Piano, and the film captures the masterful use of light, carefully orchestrated relationship between inside and outside, the seamless connection to the surroundings, and an exacting craftsmanship.
Alan Hess is an architect and author who has shed light on many forgotten and neglected styles of postwar American modernist architecture. The Los Angeles Conservancy named him "The preeminent authority on Southern California Modernism." Host George Smart named him the Samuel L. Jackson of architecture documentaries, because like the prolific Mr. Jackson in film, Alan has appeared in more documentaries for design than anyone else. Hess is one of the stars in a Jake and Tracey Gorst documentary on architect Albert Frey, the first American to work for French superstar architect Le Corbusier, in the film Frey Part I, The Architectural Envoy.
We love realtors, and we also know many who would rather tear mid-century Modernist houses down than find new caring owners. That's ok, because there are realtors like today's guests who are passionate advocates for Modernist houses and go the extra mile.
Martie Lieberman is a real estate agent with fans all over the world for mid-century modern and unique architectural houses. Martie was the force behind a resurgence of interest in the preservation of modern houses in Sarasota, Florida, and she created the Sarasota Architectural Foundation (SAF). She has been honored with the Florida AIA's Bob Graham Award for promoting and preserving Modernist design.
Chris Menrad has been part of the Palm Springs real estate community for over 10 years. The stock trader-turned-real estate agent represents some of the most stunning mid-century modern houses on the market. He came to Palm Springs in 1999 and bought a Modernist house by architect Bill Krisel plus he has restored five mid-century modern houses in Palm Springs. Chris is a founding board member of the Palm Springs Modern Committee and a past board member of the Architecture & Design Council of the Palm Springs Art Museum.
Watergate has come to mean scandal, usually but not always, political. The gate part is used as a suffix for other scandals in everything from sports to entertainment to media. Along with co-host Erin Sterling Lewis, winner of the 2018 AIA Young Architects Awards, host George Smart welcomes Joe Rodota, author of THE WATERGATE, a history of the iconic Washington DC building and some of its most famous residents. Rodota served as a writer and communications manager in the Reagan White House and as an aide to California Governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post and other publications.
Louis Kahn was one of the most brilliant and enigmatic architects of the 20th century. He died in 1974. There’s an stirring and brilliant documentary about his life, filmed by his son, called My Architect. Kahn taught at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania most of his career. He didn’t do a lot of buildings, but he was famous for almost all of them plus many fascinating unbuilt projects. One of those was the Four Freedoms memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Roosevelt Island in New York City. It was on the drawing boards when Kahn died. The project languished for decades and wasn’t finished until 2012. The architecture firm Mitchell Giurgola in New York ultimately took Kahn’s design and faithfully executed it to much international acclaim. Host George Smart does a West Wing walk n talk with Paul Broches, the Mitchell Giurgola partner in charge of Four Freedoms. They met at the tram station on the East side, right near the Queensboro Bridge. After a while exploring the memorial, they met one of the show's favorite guests.
Every fall, the New York Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF) premieres the best new documentaries of the year. Kelsey Keith, the Editor-in-Chief of Curbed, was on the ADFF discussion panel for Enough White Teacups, a film by Michelle Bauer Carpenter about using design to solve critical human problems. Host George Smart interviewed Keith at the Curbed offices in New York where they talked about the movie as well as Paris, Candide, and tacos.
The Mmuseumm is New York's smallest, barely the size of a closet, and highlights a new model of curating modern artifacts. The New York Times Style Magazine included Mmuseumm on The Cultivist’s “Top 12 International Hidden Art Gems,” and it was called curatorial genius by Steve Heller at The Atlantic. Closed for the winter, it will reopen in the spring.
Greg Durrell is the producer of Design Canada, the first documentary chronicling the history of Canadian graphic design and how it shaped a nation and its people. He is a partner at Hulse & Durrell, a Vancouver-based firm that develops brands, products and films for ambitious organizations to make a lasting impact. Their client list includes the International Olympic Committee, the Canadian Olympic Team, NBC Sports, and Square, that company whose terminals you're swiping regularly.
California architect John Lautner, who died in 1994, was a genius of architecture who inspired generations of fans. His houses are among the most famous ever built - because you've seen them in so may movies: Chemosphere House (Body Double), Garcia House (Lethal Weapon), Sheats Goldstein House (Big Lebowski), and Elrod House (Diamonds are Forever) are just four of his many thrilling buildings. Today's guests are two of Lautner's closest associates, people who knew him best over decades; his partner and right hand, architect of the stunning Arango House in Acapulco, Helena Arahuete, and Modernist master builder Robin Poirier.
Sekou Cooke is a Jamaican-born architect with degrees from Cornell and Harvard who is a assistant professor of Architecture at Syracuse. He is a leading columnist and lecturer advocating for more minorities in architecture. If you think we live in a post-racial era in the profession of architecture, think again. Minorities in 1968 made up only about 1% of the architects in America. 50 years later, we’re up to 2%. Host George Smart spoke with Cooke at the AIA New York Center for Architecture where Cooke has a major exhibition on through January 12 called Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip Hop Architecture. Hip-hop is a cultural movement established by Black and Latino youth of New York’s South Bronx neighborhood in the early 1970s. Hip hop has profoundly affected music and all of the arts. It has emerged not only as an influence on architecture but something bursting to produce its own unique architecture."
Michigan, that fine state shaped like your hand, is a hotbed of amazing Modernism. Today George Smart and co-host Bob Langford chat with three knowledgeable guests about Michigan Modern.
Michael Dow is President of the Alden and Vada Dow Family Foundations based in a town where the cherry pie is always amazing, Charlevoix Michigan. Established in 1960, the Foundation benefits central Michigan. He’s the son of architect Alden Dow, who took a sharp left from the Dow family chemical business and became a world-class Modernist architect based in Midland Michigan. You’ve heard a lot over the last few years about Columbus, Indiana, but Midland ranks right up there as one of the most remarkable Modernist enclaves in America.
Susan Bandes is Professor of Art History and Director of Museum Studies at Michigan State University. She ran MSU's Kresge Art Museum which is now the Broad Art Museum and curated exhibitions on Frank Lloyd Wright, and American Modernism. She teaches Renaissance and Baroque Art, Modern Architecture, Curatorial Practices and is author of Mid-Michigan Modern: From Frank Lloyd Wright to Googie. She’s also an expert on a chain called Dawn’s Donuts.
Brian Conway is the longtime State Historic Preservation Officer in Michigan. He is co-author of Michigan Modern: Design That Shaped America and won the 2016 Advocacy Award from Docomomo-US. That stands for the Documentation and Conservation of the Modern Movement, not to be confused to Kokomo, a Beach Boys song. His new book, Michigan Modern: An Architectural Legacy has remarkable color photography taken expressly for this book by James Haefner.
Dropping by the studio, the Mac McLaughlin Group: Mac McLaughlin, Mike Randall, Peter Joyner, and Kevin Golden.
Not only did Tom resupply the Cheetos and those delicious Delta airlines cookies today but we have the privilege of talking with podcast host Frances Anderton.
If you live in LA, you’re heard her since 2002 every Tuesday on KCRW and the podcast DNA which stands for Design N Architecture. She is also a full-time producer of KCRW's national and local current affairs shows To The Point and Which Way, LA? We’ve been fans for years, and her insightful stories and interviews inspire design fans nationwide!
We're checking out other design podcasts around the country and this week it's the host of the design podcast Convo By Design, Josh Cooperman. Josh is a speaker, writer, publisher, host, brand manager and product designer with over 25 years in the broadcast industry including CBS Radio Motorsports and Playboy Radio. His masterful podcast Convo by Design tells powerful and inspiring stories of how architects, artists, designers, tastemakers and influencers make a difference in our lives, build their brands, and delight their clients.
Laura Massino is LA's premier architecture tour guide and the prolific author of a series called Architecture Tours LA Guidebooks, which includes the volumes Frank Gehry Architecture, Pasadena, Downtown, Hancock Park, Hollywood, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, and our favorite hood, Silver Lake.
Heather Papinchak is co-owner of Polymath Park in Acme PA. She and her husband Tom are serial Modernists. They don’t just collect chairs and art like you do, they collect entire houses associated with the architect Frank Lloyd Wright – even moving some houses across the country – to create a fantastic 130-acre touring experience within an hour of Wright’s other landmarks, Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob, where you can stay overnight in one of the houses!
With training in historic Preservation, Architecture, and Urban Planning, Lorrie Muldowney is President of Creative Preservation and has lived in Sarasota County for the past 47 years. She formerly served as the Sarasota County historical resources specialist and manager of the Sarasota County History Center.
Lorrie is part of the wildly popular Architectural Trolley Tours offered by the Center for Architecture Sarasota with Harold Bubil, the former Sarasota Herald-Tribune real estate editor who has written about Modernist architecture since before it was cool. Retired from the paper after 43 years, he continues to write feature stories and is working on a book, Florida Buildings I Love.
Tom Dyckhoff is one of Britain’s best-known commentators on architecture and urbanism, with many radio, television, and documentaries to his credit. He is the presenter of The Great Interior Design Challenge and the Radio 4 series The Design Dimension. He was previously architecture and design critic for BBC2’sThe Culture Show and architecture critic of The Times. He presented The Secret Life of Buildings for Channel 4, and his seven-part BBC 2 series, Saving Britain’s Past, examined Britain's obsession with heritage. An Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute for British Architects, which is the British equivalent of our AIA, Dyckhoff writes for the Guardian, GQ, Wallpaper, and the New Statesman, among others.
Today USModernist Radio welcomes guest co-host Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell along with author of the book The Creative Architect, Pierluigi Serraino, the Fox Mulder of architecture, with information on a secret 1950’s psychological study involving IM Pei, Richard Neutra, George Nelson, Victor Lundy, Louis Kahn, Eero Saarinen, and Philip Johnson among others. Yes, folks, there are architecture X-files!
Pierluigi Serraino is an architect and author with expertise on postwar American architecture, modernism, architectural photography, and digital design. he has been published in Architectural Record, Architecture California, the Journal of Architectural Education, and Architectural Design (UK), among others, and has authored several books, among them Modernism Rediscovered (2000) and NorCalMod: Icons of Northern California Modernism (2006).
Today USModernist Radio welcomes guest co-host Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell along with two people working to keep Modernism alive and well - brutalist documentarian Chris Grimley and the founder of iconichouses.org, Natascha Drabbe.
Chris Grimley is a partner at the firm over/under, designing not just buildings but full experiences in architecture, graphic design, and interior design. His book Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston has been awarded honors by DoCoMomo and the Boston Preservation Alliance. In addition, he curates the pinkcomma gallery, is a co-founder of Design Biennial Boston, and recently released the Boston Brutalist Map, published by Blue Crow Media.
Natascha Drabbe is an architectural historian and founder of the Iconic Houses Network, connecting important 20th century houses from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater to Mies van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat. She divides her time between Amsterdam and Utrecht, where she runs the Van Schijndel House that inspired her to set up the house museum network.
Craig Ellwood was not a licensed architect but to his Los Angeles design clients he was a true design genius, and he could sell, too. Derided by the architecture profession of which he was formally not a part, he rose to public fame when three of his designs were included in the iconic Case Study House series. His houses are still incredibly prized today.
Michael Boyd is a landscape, furniture, and architectural designer. He is the principal of BoydDesign, a consultancy for the restoration and preservation of Modernist architecture – and listen to this, kids, he lives in Oscar Niemeyer’s only North American house. If you don’t know who Oscar Niemeyer is, start googling. Michael is the creator of PLANEfurniture, a line of architectural furnishings featured at the SF MOMA, The Palm Springs Museum, and the University of California Santa Barbara. His new book, Making L A Modern, is about the man, the myth, the designer Craig Ellwood -and he joins us from that amazing Niemeyer house in Santa Monica.
Anyone listening to USModernist has gotten in a car, or a plane, to pilgrimage to some amazing building. In fact, tt's a sure sign you're a Modernist fan if you go to a city just for the architecture. Sam Lubell is an expert on Modernist buildings and houses you can visit. He writes for Wired, the architect’s newspaper, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, Architect, Architectural Record, and Architectural Review. Recently he co-curated exhibitions Never Built Los Angeles and Shelter: Rethinking How We Live in Los Angeles. He has written seven books about architecture including the Modern Architecture Travel Guide East and West Coast editions. Don't leave home without them!
USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week, a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, and exhibits. Host George Smart wraps up our series in conversation with some of the talented people behind Modernism Week: Executive Director Lisa Vossler Smith, early organizer Jacques Caussin, and Chairman William Kopelk.
Modernist fans tend to be foodies - or it is the other way around? USModernist Radio's biggest fan in Melbourne, Australia is Chef Ben Shewry. He’s been featured in many publications, including the New York Times as owner of Attica in Melbourne. He was one of six chefs featured in the inaugural season of the Netflix original documentary Chef's Table and he is author of Origin: The Food of Ben Shewry.
Chef Scott Crawford is a four-time James Beard semi-finalist and the owner of Crawford and Son in Raleigh NC, the Triangle’s Restaurant of the Year for 2018. Crawford also was named among the top 100 chefs in America by Esquire magazine’s longtime national dining critic John Mariani.
Raleigh architect, artist, banjo player, and returning podcast guest Louis Cherry has taught in the NCSU College of Design on and off for over 20 years, and since 1992 he has designed a dozen restaurants.
USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week. It’s a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and you can even order martinis for breakfast. Yes, you can do that anywhere but you'll feel glamorous in Palm Springs. USModernist Radio's George Smart was there with keynote speakers and other special guests who make Modernism Week a blast.
Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher is the Helen Hilton Raiser Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She designed exhibits including A. Quincy Jones: Building for Better Living at the Hammer Museum in 2013 and The Utopian Impulse: Buckminster Fuller and The Bay Area in 2012. Since 2010, she has been building SFMOMA’s Architecture and Design collection.
Christiane Robbins, Professor and Director of USC’s Matrix Program for Digital Media, and Katherine Lambert, Professor at the California College of the Arts join George to discuss their new film, Gregory Ain, the Most Dangerous Architect in America. With images of FBI surveillance records recently obtained, they explore architect Ain’s career and why J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI watched him and his family for years.
People who like Modernism show it in various ways. They buy the books, they watch the documentaries, they get a few pieces of furniture, they may visit the work of a few famous architects. Sometimes they build or buy a Modernist house. Michael LaFetra is way beyond that. Born in Los Angeles, Michael had a successful career creating restaurants in New York City before he moved back home to LA in 1999. Since then, he bought a Modernist house. Then another. Then another. As far as we can tell, he may be the foremost collector of Modernist houses in the country; with houses designed by Quincy Jones, John Lautner, Rudolph Schindler, Frank Gehry, Richard Neutra, Paul Williams, Pierre Koenig, Ray Kappe, and more.
Dropping by the studio, it’s a special reunion of Lulu and the Lounge Lizards, with Linda Smith as lead singer, Richard Tazwell on piano, David Shore on drums, and Jeff Brown on Sax.
USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week. It’s a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and you can even order martinis for breakfast. Yes, you can do that anywhere but you'll feel glamorous in Palm Springs. USModernist Radio's George Smart was there with keynote speakers and other special guests who make Modernism Week a blast.
Nate Cormier is a Principal working Los Angeles-based Rios Clementi Hale Studios. He discusses the new public space in downtown Palm Springs, a wonderful area that will include the Big Marilyn as well as Frey and Kocher's Aluminaire House.
Michelle Delk is a Partner, Landscape Architect and ASLA Discipline Director with Snøhetta, an architecture and design firm that has garnered international acclaim for projects including the Bibilioteca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, the expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo, and the Jim Hunt Library in Raleigh NC. She discusses the design of the Willamette Falls Riverwalk in Oregon and how landscape architecture inspires us in ways most people don't realize.
USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week. It’s a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and you can even order martinis for breakfast. Yes, you can do that anywhere but you'll feel glamorous in Palm Springs. USModernist Radio's George Smart was there with keynote speakers and other special guests who make Modernism Week a blast.
Cory Buckner is an architect, artist, and author from LA. She is one of the world's experts on A. Quincy Jones Modernist houses loved by celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston and Ellen Degeneres. Los Angeles Magazine named Cory as one of Six Women who Changed The Face of LA Architecture and her architecture firm specializes in Modernist design. She was the force behind preserving Crestwood Hills in LA, a neighborhood full of Modernist houses that by now would likely have been extinct if not for her efforts.
Producer Leo Zahn premiered "Sinatra in Palm Springs – The Place He Called Home" at Modernism Week, exploring Frank Sinatra’s primary home for almost 50 years. From his houses to where he ate to where he entertained, the film features interviews with Barbara Sinatra, Mel Haber, Tom Dreesen, Nelda Linsk, Bruce Fessier, Trini Lopez, Michael Fletcher, and others who knew and lived and played with Frank Sinatra. After completing USC Film School, Zahn studied architecture and design in Europe. Over the course of his 30 year career in advertising he directed and photographed more than 600 commercials.
Architect Paul McClean grew up Ireland, thinking of houses and getting in trouble for drawing them in high school. He graduated from the Dublin Institute of Technology in 1994 and by 2000, he was on his own in Los Angeles. His clients include Irish real estate investor Paddy McKillen, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss of Facebook fame, and developer Niles Niami, a spec Modernist house clocking in at 104,000 square feet, with an asking price of half a billion. It is the largest and most expensive Modernist house in the world.
Dropping by the studio, longtime North Carolina swing band Rebecca and the Hi-Tones play "Straighten Up and Fly Right" by Nat King Cole. We visit with Rebecca and Keith as they share the story of the band.
USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week. It’s a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and you can even order martinis for breakfast. Yes, you can do that anywhere but you'll feel glamorous in Palm Springs. USModernist Radio's George Smart was there with keynote speakers and other special guests who make Modernism Week a blast.
You may not think of Modernism and Denver in the same sentence, but Adrian Kinney is about to change that. Kinney was born and raised in Lakewood CO. After college, he stayed in Colorado and became a fulltime realtor specializing in Modern, starting with his own house designed by architect Cliff May. Now he's the force behind Denver's Modernism Week this August.
You also might not think of Indiana and Modern, but that state has a lot going on. George welcomes back Marsh Davis of Indiana Landmarks to catch up on Modernist preservation in the Hoosier state.
In 1948, most US universities were slow to embrace the growing Modernist movement. Then NC State University brought in a brilliant Dean from Oklahoma who went all-in on Modernism. Within two years, Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra were speaking at the school and students and faculty from all over the world wanted to be there. He wasn't the greatest architect and only designed a few buildings, but he sure knew how to get NC State's School of Design on the map. Although he died in 1990, his impact on thousands of careers and tens of thousands of buildings endures. USModernist Radio welcomes former students, old friends, and respected colleagues Abie Harris, Roger Clark, Ben Taylor, and Jerzy Główczewski to talk about the man, the myth, the legend, Henry Kamphoefner.
USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week. It’s a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and you can even order martinis for breakfast. Yes, you can do that anywhere but you'll feel glamorous in Palm Springs. USModernist Radio's George Smart was there with keynote speakers and other special guests who make Modernism Week a blast.
The Kaufmann House is one of the most famous residences in Palm Springs. Designed by Richard Neutra, it passed through a succession of owners and unfortunate renovations until Brent and Beth Harris brought it back to its original glory. George talks about the house and it's journey from the past into the future with Brent Harris in a rare visit, poolside at the Kaufmann House.
Hugh Kaptur is the last living major mid-century modern architect in Palm Springs. He's the Obiwan of Modernism, the last of the Jedi. Alongside other celebrated Palm Springs architects, such as E. Stewart Williams, Donald Wexler, Bill Cody, John Porter Clark, and Albert Frey, Kaptur created the Modernist vibe that Palm Springs is famous for, from hotels to fire stations to apartment complexes to houses. From the 1950's through today, he's been turning out head-turning award-winning architecture. Kaptur has a star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars. He was featured in the documentary Quiet Elegance.
Architect Ellen Cassilly worked in Paris with Christian DePortzamarc, who you’ll recall was a winner of the Pritzker Prize, and Arata Isozaki in Tokyo, before coming to North Carolina. After bringing exciting projects together for other firms, such as the NC Museum of Art Ampitheatre, she started Ellen Cassilly Architect in 1999. She is featured in the book, Drawing From Practice, and she co-teaches the architectural design/build studio at NC State University’s College of Design. With her husband Frank Konhaus, they gave birth to a spectacular house/museum/gallery called Cassilhaus, a combination of their names. The house now celebrates its 10th anniversary. Cassilhaus is more than just beautifully designed and built, it’s part gallery, part artist quarters, part home!
USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week. It’s a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and you can even order martinis for breakfast. Yes, you can do that anywhere but you'll feel glamorous in Palm Springs. USModernist Radio's George Smart was there with keynote speakers and other special guests who make Modernism Week a blast.
You can't go to Modernism Week without running into our next two guests at some event.
Annalisa Capurro flies in every year from Sydney, Australia, where she is an interior designer, educator, architectural historian, author, and writer. One of Modernism Week's most popular speakers, Annalisa is passionate about the protection and preservation of mid century architecture. She owns 'The Jack House' on Sydney's Upper North Shore.
Alan Hess is an architect and architectural historian. He's been in so many architecture documentaries, we call him the Samuel L. Jackson of Modernism! Alan is the author and/or co-author of nineteen books exploring about Modernist architecture and is a frequent speaker at Modernism Week.
In this digital age, everyone’s taking photos, billions of them, primarily with their phones. We talk today about architectural photography, and how both digital and social changes in photography affect decisions about the kind of buildings we see built, the design competitions where photos play a part, and how you can take better photos of architecture you love, like your own house.
Our first guest is architect Harry Wolf, joining us from his home in Portugal. Harry worked at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill in New York and opened Wolf Architecture in North Carolina and later NY and LA. If you were watching closely, Harry was in the documentary Concert of Wills about the making of the Getty Center. Harry won five national AIA honor awards and over 30 regional and state AIA honors. He is a frequent juror for the George Matsumoto Prize, North Carolina’s highest honors exclusively for Modernist houses.
Raleigh Architect Matt Griffith graduated in Architecture from the NCState College of Design. Before founding the award-winning design firm in situ studio with past podcast guest Erin Sterling Lewis, Matt worked in the offices of Marlon Blackwell and another past podcast guest, Frank Harmon. Matt and Erin won twenty-two local and state design awards, including several of the George Matsumoto Prizes we mentioned earlier. He lives in a mid-century modernist house and is Associate Professor at the NCState School of Architecture.
Photographer Jim Sink has been shooting buildings, with his camera, for nearly 50 years. He is a graduate of the US Naval School of Photography. Since 1980, he’s been an award-winning architectural photographer, creating beautiful images of homes, offices, theatres, and other structures that influence design and construction decisions across North Carolina and the nation.
USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week. It’s a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and you can even order martinis for breakfast. Yes, you can do that anywhere but you'll feel glamorous in Palm Springs. USModernist Radio's George Smart was there with the week's keynote speakers and other special guests who make Modernism Week a blast.
Atomic Ranch Magazine celebrates mid-century houses from 1940's ranch tracts to 1960's architect-designed Modernist homes. George welcomes Sarah Jane Stone, editor and brand leader, as they chat poolside at the Hotel Skylark. And later, he talks with Lindsay Blake, location expert, is creator of the blog I Am Not a Stalker. She's a walking encyclopedia of TV and movie locations all around California. She'll share the ground rules of not-stalking and her quest for the home of Tal Weaver, an obscure character in her favorite show, Beverly Hills 90210.
(Since this show was recorded, Lindsay found the Tal Weaver house!)
Richard Neutra was one of the world’s most important architects, and today his work is even more popular. Neutra designed more than 300 amazing Modernist houses in California and elsewhere. In 1949, Time Magazine featured Neutra on its cover and ranked him second only to Frank Lloyd Wright in American architecture. Neutra hired several architects who went on to independent success, including Gregory Ain, Harwell Hamilton Harris, and Raphael Soriano. Our first guest is Neutra’s son and a good friend of the podcast, Raymond Neutra, who has been traveling the world photographing his father’s houses. He is author of Cheap and Thin: Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Joining Raymond is Barbara Lamprecht, one of the world’s foremost experts on Richard Neutra’s architecture. If you’ve been in any Modernist house worth talking about, you’ve seen one of her Neutra books on the Noguchi or Nelson coffee table. She is an architect and architectural historian and a kind of forensic examiner, performing environmental reviews, and applying for the National Register of Historic Places, National Historic Landmarks, and Mills Act programs. She specializes in Modernism and has appeared in the documentaries GlobeTrekker, Visual Acoustics, and Coast Modern.
Gregory Ain was inspired to become an architect after visiting Rudolf Schindler's King’s Road house. He worked for Richard Neutra as well as Harwell Hamilton Harris. As a result of a proposed housing project suspected of being communist by Senator Joseph McCarthy -- because it was racially integrated -- Ain was investigated by the FBI over 30 years. He was considered the most dangerous architect in America, and this broad and inaccurate accusation caused the loss of many commissions. Our first guest is Ain’s daughter, Emily Ain.
Architect Pierre Koenig apprenticed in the offices of Raphael Soriano and A. Quincy Jones. He designed the iconic, world-famous Stahl House, the most famous "case study house," up in the hills above LA. His innovative steel buildings often hung onto cliffsides and masterfully defied gravity. We are joined by his son, attorney Randy Koenig, specializing in the legal needs of design professionals.
Johnny Örbäck was about 47 when he had a fantastic idea. It was 1999, and as Managing Director of a public housing agency in Malmo, Sweden, he decided to commission the world’s most unique housing project from architect Santiago Calatrava.
Calatrava, known for wildly creative buildings and bridges all over the world is famous for being an architectural genius, and he’s also famous for enormous cost overruns, for example, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York, with a $3.9 billion price tag, $2 billion over budget. The New York Times has documented every Calatrava financial disaster, including his truly brilliant City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain that came in at four times the original price. What's it like to be a client of Calatrava? Today, you'll find out.
Covering topics from England to the Congo, today’s show features host George Smart and the stars, producers, and creators of the latest architecture documentaries, recorded in New York at the Architecture and Design Film Festival late last year.
George’s first guest is Sarah Howitt, Producer and Director of Building Hope: The Maggie’s Centres, beautiful architect-designed facilities for patients with cancer and their families in the UK. Next, George is joined by Thatcher Bean, producer of Made in Ilima, which tracks the collective building process of a modern school and community center in Ilima, a town in a remote and ecologically sensitive region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Hugh Hefner passed away last year after decades at the helm of Playboy magazine, the first mainstream magazine featuring nude centerfolds that depending on your point of view, liberated women, demeaned women, or both. But you may not know that for nearly 20 years, Playboy promoted Modernist design like no other publication. Features on Frank Lloyd Wright, Bucky Fuller, Mies Van Der Rohe, Charles Eames, and others influenced a generation.
Professor Beatriz Colomina is Director of PhD Graduate Studies at Princeton University's School of Architecture. Her books include Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, awarded the 1995 International Book Award by the AIA; Sexuality and Space awarded the 1993 AIA International Book Award; She also had an essay published in the book The Sex of Architecture. In 2016, her exhibition Playboy Magazine and the Architecture of Seduction highlighted the magazine’s role in popularizing Modernism.
Originally from New Zealand, Sandra Costa was a Playboy bunny in Miami and Los Angeles from 1967 to 1974. Soon she was known as the Kiwi bunny. She’s a well-known celebrity designer and founder of the Sandra Costa Design Group, providing custom interior design and remodeling - an award-winning furniture designer and a grandmother of three.
Seattle has coffee, and rain, and Amazon, and amazing Tom Kundig houses. It also has our guest today, Eugenia Woo, one of Seattle’s top advocates for Modernist historic preservation. She is the director of preservation services at Historic Seattle and is a co-founder and board member of Docomomo WEWA. Founded in 1974, Historic Seattle preserves Seattle’s architectural legacy. Eugenia has a BA in political science from the University of California at Berkeley and a Masters of Urban Planning and Preservation Planning from the University of Washington. We talk about key Modernist buildings in Seattle and Woo's work to save them.
From the Architecture and Design Film Festival in New York City, held late last year, host George Smart's first guests are Ted Bosley and Lori Korngeibel talking about the Gamble House in Pasadena, America’s most famous Arts and Crafts house, and later, George is joined by Catherine Ledner and Roy Beeson, creators of a new documentary about Catherine’s father, New Orleans architect Albert Ledner, who died shortly after the film premiered.
Tammy Hauser is Executive Director for the Center for Architecture Sarasota, a nexus for midcentury Modernist houses. She's the CEO of Blue Sky Thinking, a consulting firm based in Sarasota for nonprofit organizations. This spring, the Center for Architecture Sarasota hosts an exhibition on Larry Scarpa, a Modernist architect based in Los Angeles, who uses conventional materials in unexpected ways and is considered a leader in sustainable design. She's also a commercial theater producer and creator of The Ultimate Pajama Party™, a theatrical experience for women.
You may recall that a few months ago, host George Smart interviewed Kyle Bergman, director of the Architecture and Design Film Festival in New York City. Today’s special bonus edition features George and the stars, producers, and creators of the latest architecture documentaries, recorded in New York at the Architecture and Design Film Festival late last year.
Many Americans think the last World's Fair was in New York in 1964 but they've been going on around the world ever since - just without America's participation. George’s first guest is Mina Chow, producer and star of Face of a Nation: What Happened to the World’s Fair, and later on, he talks with Bruce Inglis, director of Photography for the documentary Glenn Morcutt: A Spirit of Place.
Hawai'i is full of Modernist architecture! Today we talk with Dean Sakamoto who lives and works in both Hawai'i and Connecticut. He worked with the Univ of Hawai'i Department of Urban and Regional planning and he founded SHADE, Hawai'i's first public interest design organization that plans designs and builds in the rapidly urbanizing tropics. He also is on the board of DOCOMOMO Hawai'i which has their annual tour every October.
Returning to the podcast is our good friend Brad Dunning, one of California’s most sought-after interior designers. He's worked on numerous Richard Neutra houses and offices, including his own, with Tom Ford on his 1955 Neutra home, Courteney Cox on her Neutra office complex, the famous Kaufman house in Palm Springs, and other houses by A. Quincy Jones, Paul Williams, John Lautner, and Wallace Neff. He gives a rockin’ talk on Hawai'i modernism every so often at Palm Springs Modernism Week, and he has written about architecture and design for Vogue, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and GQ Magazine.
There are certain Modernist houses that just can’t be captured in a photo, a video, or even a 3D rendering. For example, Fallingwater in Pennsylvania is considered Frank Lloyd Wright’s greatest residential work. It continues to attract millions of people, and in 1991 the AIA named Fallingwater the "best all-time work of American architecture." Denise Miner isPublic Tour Supervisor at Fallingwater. She’s been associated with the house in some way almost all her life and has worked there as a guide for more than 30 years. Her grandfather and two uncles were part of Fallingwater’s construction and she is the Obiwan Kenobi of Fallingwater, training their team of wonderful guides.
However, there ain’t no party like a west coast party, and in LA there’s a house that’s not only iconic, it’s a true Hollywood movie celebrity. Former football player Buck Stahl created the vision for the Stahl House, also known as Case Study House 22, designed by Pierre Koenig. The two-bedroom house features a wraparound view from the mountains to the sea. It starred in countless movies and TV plus music videos for ATB and Wilson Phillips. In 2013 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Shari Stahl Grunwald grew up in the home and administers the property with her brother Bruce.
After WWII, states looked at their aging capitol buildings and considered sweeping new plans to bring technology, commerce, government, and even the performing arts into the full 20th century. One of the few state capitols to actually achieve this was Albany NY. The Empire State Plaza is series of Modernist office and cultural buildings that started in the late 1950’s, and it’s gorgeous. It’s a stunning achievement spearheaded by NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller and designed primarily by architect Wallace Harrison.
Albany’s master plan was so successful, other states wanted to do the same thing. One of those was North Carolina. In 1965, the State Capital planning Commission issues a report and a design they had been working on for several administrations. The goal was, like Albany, to transform the epicenter of downtown Raleigh, the state capitol, into a city of the future. The blue ribbon panel of architects, consultants, and government members presented a beautiful plan.
One of those consultants from 1965 is a young man with a lot of potential who just turned 90. Lewis Clarke is one of North Carolina’s most celebrated and prolific landscape architects. Clarke came to Harvard on a Fulbright Scholarship taught at the the NCSU School of Design from 1952 to 1968. His teaching influenced generations of architects and his 1300 projects, papers, photographs, and slides are now at the NC State University Special Collections Research Center, their third largest collection. And he’s received awards from Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford, and Nancy Reagan.
Erin Sterling Lewis is a partner in situ studio in Raleigh. Her firm won multiple design awards, including our own Matsumoto Prize, and she teaches at NC State University. She was President of AIA North Carolina representing the thousands of architects in the state. She also works with NCModernist on our high school outreach program, Project BauHow, and has served on countless AIA committees plus the Raleigh Historic Development Commission and the Raleigh Planning Commission.
Australian comedian Tim “Rosso” Ross has starred in countless Australian radio and TV series. He’s a writer for Men’s Style Australia, Rolling Stone and Sydney Magazine. He’s interviewed and talked with celebrities like Will Farrell, John C. O’Reilly, and Hugh Jackman through shows such as Merrick and Rosso Unplanned, The B Team, Uncharted, Facing the Hangover, and Australia Versus. He’s a speaker, giving talks on Modernism at the Museum of Sydney, Government House, and Sydney Design Week. And he’s been part of an 80’s hair band called Black Rose, where he totally rocks it in lycra. In 2013 Tim started a unique stand-up show ‘Man about the House’ set in real Modernist houses, with sell-out seasons in Melbourne, Sydney and New Zealand. The best part is, he got up 7am his time to talk with us, for which we are profoundly grateful.
Roberta Leighton "runs the place" for owner Jim Goldstein at the Sheats Goldstein house in Los Angeles, designed by John Lautner. She manages hundreds of movie, commercial, and photo shoots at the house, one of the country's most iconic. One of the most famous movies shot there was The Big Lebowski. Roberta has also been in a ton of some of the movies and shows we love. She was Bill Murray's girlfriend in Stripes, plus she's appeared on The Dukes of Hazzard, Barnaby Jones, Switch, Rosetti and Ryan, Days of our Lives, General Hospital, Baretta, and for over a dozen years she played Dr. Casey Reed on the Young and The Restless. USModernist Radio is sponsored by Sarah Sonke of ModHomes Realty. Listen via iTunes. Listen on Android and Windows PC's via Libsyn.
Architect Edward Durell Stone like many of his generation fell in love with Modernism. His first independent commission was a 1933 Modernist house for Richard Mandel, which led to many other prominent commissions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington. Stone is one of the few architects to make the cover of TIME. Business Week called Stone "the man with a billion on the drawing board" for the number and scale of prestigious projects in development. About that time, however, Stone had a change of philosophy about Modernist design and moved away from what he called the “transient enthusiasms” of Modernism. Stone was not alone. By 1970, the Modernist movement was nearly dead. In North Carolina, Stone worked with Raleigh architects John Holloway and Ralph Reeves on two of the state’s most recognized and treasured buildings, the 1963 North Carolina Legislative Building and 20 years later, the North Carolina Museum of Art. We talk with Stone’s son, Hicks Stone, and Reeves’ son, Bernie Reeves.
Hicks Stone is the author of Edward Durell Stone: A Son's Untold Story of a Legendary Architect.He is the principal of Stone Architecture LLC and has been featured in House & Garden, Palm Beach Cottages & Gardens, The New Yorker and This Old House.
North Carolina publisher and political writer Bernie Reeves created Spectator Magazine; Triangle Business Journal; Triad Business Journal; and Raleigh Metro Magazine. He ran for Congress in 2010, writes for the National Review, and has been a good friend to NC Modernist and US Modernist since we started.
Design guru and critic Stephen Bayley came to prominence in the 1980's curating the Boilerhouse Project at the Victoria and Albert Museum and later created London’s Design Museum. In the 1990’s he was briefly the creative director for a notoriously expensive and bureaucratic public boondoogle called the Millennium Dome (now the 02 Arena), and in 2007 he became The Observer's architecture and design correspondent. We talk about what makes an architect a starchitect, his dust-up with Zaha Hadid, and his appearance on Top Gear, a world-famous BBC car show that’s still running, barely, like a 1977 Ford Capri.
Emmy-winning filmmaker Jake Gorst is the Steven Spielberg of design documentaries, capturing mid-century modern architecture in at least 12 films on modern design, including a great series on Palm Springs architects such as E. Stewart Williams, Donald Wexler, and Bill Krisel - plus Modern Tide, Modern Ruin with past guest Matthew Silva, Beyond the Beach: The Life and Death of Norman Jaffe, and the upcoming film Frey.
Architect Kyle Bergman is director of the upcoming Architecture & Design Film Festival in New York, which he started in 2008 and has expanded to cities all over the world. In 1994 he created and moderated an architectural lecture series about the design/build process for the Smithsonian Institute. An entrepreneur at heart, Mr. Bergman founded Alt Spec in 1999, a publishing company that produced a visual resource of unique and alternative products for architects and designers.
Our first musical guests! Peter Lamb and the Wolves stopped by the studio to perform "Mess Around" and "Night Witches." Peter Lamb, sax; Pete Kimosh, bass; Carl Blackwell, drums; Paul Rogers, trumpet; Mark Wells, vocals and keyboard.
Rudolph Michael Schindler, who went by Michael, was one of the most important Modernist architects of the 20th century, yet he is largely unknown to the public outside California. Frank Lloyd Wright hired him in 1918, and soon he was running Wright's studio in Oak Park the later in Los Angeles. Schindler and Wright argued frequently and eventually Schindler quit, becoming a huge success on his own. Schindler and his wife Pauline were dead center in the Los Angeles creative scene, hanging out with the era's celebrities in art, sculpture, design, and dance. Richard Neutra and his wife lived at King's Road with Schindlers for several years! We talk with Dr. Mary Schindler, his daughter-in-law, perhaps one of the last living people who knew Michael Schindler, who died in 1953. She was married to his son Mark at the time and lived in their famous King’s Road house with Mark, Michael, and Pauline. We also talk with musician Guillaume Schindler, Schindler's great-grandson, who is a docent at the King's Road house. And did you know that, briefly, Dr. Mary Schindler was Groucho Marx' therapist?
What makes a house too big? And is it really anyone’s business other than the owner? We talk with Thomas Bena and Mollie Doyle, stars and creators of the new documentary One Big Home, based in Martha's Vineyard MA. Like many wealthy coastal communities, new homes there are not the cottages which have dominated the area for centuries. 10,000 sf and 20,000sf and even larger McMansions started appearing during the 1990’s. One Big Home is a documentary about Thomas Bena's work to curb the disruption of life on the island by giant houses. But the film is more than the story of a cause. Along the way, he found a girlfriend, Mollie Doyle, they married, moved, had a beautiful daughter named Emma - all events that influenced or changed his progress and perspective on the film and his life.
Fire Island, just 50 miles from New York City, was one of the few gathering places in the 1950’s where gay people could feel safe in a world that certainly did not offer such a welcome. It was also a haven for the creative class from New York and LA who built houses by Andrew Geller, Harry Bates, and the unbelievably attractive Horace Gifford. Our guest is Chris Rawlins, architect and author of critically-acclaimed Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction. Chris is an architect who lives in New York City and Fire Island and is founder of Pines Modern, a non-profit preservation initiative documenting the island’s architecture.
We also talk with the last living mid-century architect of Fire Island, Harry Bates, whose masterful Modernist coastal residences adorn both Fire Island and the Hamptons.
Ever wondered how the famed children's book Knuffle Bunny intersects with thoughtful urban planning? Probably not. However, today's guest is well-versed in both! Allison Arieff is editorial director of SPUR, a San Francisco-based thinktank promoting urban planning in the Bay area. Allison writes about architecture, design, and cities for the New York Times, California Sunday, Wired, MIT Technology Review, and CityLab. She is a former editor-at-large for GOOD and Sunset magazines and was a founding editor at DWELL, one of our favorite design publications. Allison is the author of Prefab, Trailer Travel: A Visual History of Mobile America, and Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht. She's been onNPR, KQED Forum, the Diane Rehm Show, the Sundance Channel, HGTV, CNN Money, and 99% invisible.
One of the problems with preserving futuristic-looking Modernist buildings is that they just don’t look that old. They aren’t universally loved, in fact some of them weren’t that popular when they were built. The World Monuments Fund (WMF) is a private nonprofit organization to decelerate the destruction of important artistic treasures throughout the world. You might have heard of the Leaning Tower of Pisa? They helped fix it. Well, they helped stop the extra leaning. We'll talk with Joshua David, President and CEOof the WMF about the fund's latest focus on Modernist buildings around the world.
Filmmaker and high school teacher Matthew Silva produced the acclaimed documentary “Modern Ruin” about one highly endangered Modernist site, the New York State Pavilion in Queens New York, or if you’re under 40, the Men In Black headquarters. As a kid. Matthew would ride past the ruined, hulking New York State Pavilion, built for the 1964 World’s Fair, and wonder what it was. Years later while studying architecture, he could not believe such a visible building by Philip Johnson could be left to ruin. His film charted the up and down history of the complex and has led to new public funding for its preservation.
Host George Smart reports from the USModernist trip to London last May. He visits architect Alison Brooks who has won the triple crown of the UK's most prestigious awards for architecture: the RIBA Stirling Prize, the Manser Medal and the Stephen Lawrence Prize. Do you know you've arrived as an architect when your building gets a nickname? And, for the first time, you'll hear the guys all sing!
Host George Smart reports from February's Modernism Week in Palm Springs, the center for all things Mid-Century Modernist! He spoke poolside from the Hotel Skylark with keynote speakers from the amazing week of design, art, food, lectures, movies - a delightful week.
George talks with Penelope Seidler, her daughter Polly Seidler, and documentary producer Daryl Dellora who created a compelling documentary about Australian architect Harry Seidler, Polly’s dad and Penelope’s husband.
Harry Seidler, who died in 2006, was Australian architect considered to be one of the country's leading Modernists. He designed more than 180 buildings and won many architectural awards throughout his 58-year career.
Daryl Dellora is also the producer behind The Edge of the Possible, the story of Jorn Utzon and the Sydney Opera House.
June is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Frank Lloyd Wright, the most famous architect in the world, still showing off 58 years after his death. Few architects have come close to Wright's arrogance, his brilliance, and his incredible output that's still with us plus buildings he designed that never got built.
Today we talk with Eric Lloyd Wright, grandson of Frank, and son of Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr., aka Lloyd Wright. Although he aspired for another career, Eric eventually returned to his roots in architecture. Following his apprenticeship with his grandfather 1948-1956 he moved back to Los Angeles to work with his father until 1978. He has since been in private practice, creating his own projects plus helping clients of his grandfather and father restore and expand their buildings.
Eric is the Obiwan Kenobi of architecture, involved in seven decades of buildings you know and love, such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Monona Terrace in Madison, Wisconsin; the Wayfarer’s Chapel in Palos Verdes, California; plus restoring older Wright projects such as Auldbrass in South Carolina; the Storer and Ennis Residences in LA, and his own house – still under construction after 30 years in Malibu.
Host George Smart reports from February's Modernism Week in Palm Springs, ground zero for all things Mid-Century Modernist! He spoke poolside from the Hotel Skylark with keynote speakers from the week. And today is Indiana day!
Todd Zeiger is the Northern Regional Director for Indiana Landmarks Director, a nonprofit saving significant and meaningful places. He's been particularly working saving and restoring Fred Keck's House of Tomorrow, a home that was ahead of it's time 80 years ago and in many ways still is.
Jennifer Sandy is a Senior Field Officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, currently living in Chicago. She manages a diverse portfolio of National Treasure campaigns, working to save historic places by providing on-the-ground support to individuals, communities, and organizations engaged in protecting America’s heritage.
Marsh Davis is the President of Indiana Landmarks. He is an ardent preservationist and has successfully saved several wonderful buildings. Davis co-wrote 99 Historic Homes of Indiana: A Look Inside. He is a founder of the National Barn Alliance and originated the long-standing Barn Again in Indiana program.
Kate Wagner created the riotously popular blog McMansionhell.com where she tears into the impractically large, ridiculously constructed, and often hilariously furnished monuments to wealth misspent. As a writer for Curbed and other design publications, she has appeared on 99% Invisible and has her own TEDx talk. Like us, she's a fan of Modernist evil lairs, writing on buildings used in film to depict the evil corporation archetype in Robocop, Blade Runner, and The Matrix. She's got a huge following and a new book in the works!
Host George Smart reports from February's Modernism Week in Palm Springs, the Mecca for all things Mid-Century Modernist! He spoke poolside from the Hotel Skylark with keynote speakers from the week. Annalisa Capurro, aka Ms. Modernism, is a interior designer, design educator, architectural historian, speaker, writer, preservationist, MCM photographer, and mid-century design afficionado who lives in the 1956 Russell Jack House in Sydney, Australia. She is an educator at Design Centre Enmore and the University of New South Wales. At Modernism Week 2017, she starred in SEXY & CULTURE, six presentations on surprising topics related to sexual mores in the MCM world. She love-love-loves the color orange. Brooke Hodge is an architect, journalist, and blogger for the New York Times Style Magazine - and the Director of Architecture and Design at the Palm Springs Art Museum, overseeing their huge architectural assets including the Architecture and Design Center and the 1964 Albert Frey house. She's worked for some of the greatest names in design museums: the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the Hammer Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. She's also into Japan, California, juggling, modeling hats, and writing Mad Libs. Besides serving as Treasurer for Palm Springs Modernism Week, which is a huge job, Mark Davis is Chair of the Aluminaire Foundation, dedicated to preserving, moving, and rebuilding Albert Frey's and Lawrence Kocher's iconic Aluminaire House from New York to Palm Springs. Spoiler: they moved it. Next challenge, getting it rebuilt. You can help!
A lot of Modernist houses you love from the 1950's and 1960's are going the way of unfortunate "renovations" or the bulldozer, largely because few people are aware of their architectural significance. Although most houses by famous architects are on lists, it's difficult to find where they are actually located. We talk with two expert house trackers who have between them documented thousands of houses and flown tens of thousands of miles to visit them!
Jan-Richard Kikkert is an Amsterdam-based architect and head of the Architectural Department of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. He has visited every project designed by John Lautner, over 300 from Los Angeles to Aspen and from Anchorage to Acapulco. He is Head of Architecture Department at the Amsterdam University of the Arts and a member of the Board of Advisors of the John Lautner Foundation. He was in the documentary Infinite Space: The Architecture of John Lautner.
Paul Moore is a former architect turned IT professional. He graduated with a BS in Architecture from the University of Michigan in 1986 and moved to Los Angeles to study at SCI-ARC. He started working on the digital version of Sweet's Catalogs for several years and in 2007, began using online mapping tools to locate public art and architecture posting to VirtualGlobeTrotting.com. He has searched for and found nearly 11,000 houses!
Host George Smart reports from February's Modernism Week in Palm Springs, the Mecca for all things Mid-Century Modernist! He spoke poolside from the Hotel Skylark with keynote speakers from the amazing annual event. Bill Earls is the author of The Harvard Five in New Canaan, Modernist houses by Breuer, Gores, Johansen, Johnson, and Noyes. A virtual tour of thirty-five landmark houses, 1947-1966, that elicited strong reactions from nearly everyone who saw them and are still astonishing today. Devon Chivvis is a writer, director, and producer of narrative and documentary television and film with a passion for visual storytelling. Since 2003, she has produced, written, and directed documentary and narrative television and film for a variety of clients such as Nat Geo Channel and Travel Channel. She's working on a documentary on the Harvard Five architects with **Bill Earls.
Bert Simonis** is the producer of Quiet Elegance, a documentary on Palm Springs architect Hugh Kaptur. Originally from Amsterdam, Simonis' other documentaries include The Last First Comic, an award-winning film chronicling the start of stand-up comedy in the burlesque industry; Mid-Century Moderns: The Homes That Define Palm Springs; 88 Days in the Mother Lode: Mark Twain Finds His Voice; and The Neon Struggle.
Today we explore two different approaches to reviving Modernist buildings: preserving them or building them from scratch!
Michael Miner is a documentary filmmaker who since 2002 has devoted his career entirely to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, chronicling the master architect’s buildings in a series of films. Miner’s first Wright film, Sacred Spaces, was completed in 2005 followed by A Child of the Sun, the story of the West Campus of Florida Southern College in Lakeland and Romanza, which was released in 2011. Miner's fourth film is called Masterpieces. But here what's really interesting - he's on a mission to actually build some of Wright's unbuilt buildings starting in Banff, Canada.
Liz Waytkus is the Executive Director of Docomomo US, the leading preservation organization dedicated to the preservation of modern architecture, landscapes, and design. She has worked to increase the awareness of and appreciation for significant modern sites and developed annual Docomomo US National Symposium and the Modernism in America Awards. Her organization's most recent success was preserving the Ambassador Grill near the United Nations in NYC.
Host George Smart reports from February's Modernism Week in Palm Springs, the Mecca for all things Modernist! He spoke poolside from the Hotel Skylark with keynote speakers from the week.
Alan Hess is a journalist, historian, architect, and author with 19 books specifically addressing mid-century modernism and countless appearances in architecture documentaries. He's the Samuel L. Jackson of architecture movies!
Janice Lyle is the Director of Operations for Sunnylands Center and Gardens, known as the "Western White House" or “Camp David West” as a secure facility established by Walter and Leonore Annenberg for internationally significant meetings. Like world-leaders level of significant! She is the author of "Sunnylands: America’s Midcentury Masterpiece" and is the former Director of the Palm Springs Art Museum.
If you’ve seen a thriller like North By Northwest or Diamonds are Forever (or many others since) you may have noticed that the bad guy has impeccable taste. The classic villain has custom-tailored suits (or dresses, let’s not be sexist), a high-end car you can’t even buy used at Carmax, a British or vaguely Russian accent, and a gorgeous Modernist house, preferably with a killer view as certainly there will be some killing going on.
We're talking about Evil Lairs, the tricked-out Modoernist houses no self-respecting villain intent on world domination would be without. Our guests are two authors who have written about some of these infamous houses, both real and imagined.
Adele Cygelman was editor-in-chief of the Robb Report Collection and Senior editor at Architectural Digest, both of which surely had villain Ernst Blofeld as well as James Bond as readers. She is the author of “Palm Springs Modern” which was the first book to focus on desert modern architecture and its talented architects. The book has been a best-seller since 1999 and was re-issued in 2015 to rediscover the timeless, cool appeal of the mid-century modern. Adele spoke at Modernism Week this year on Arthur Elrod, who you’ll learn about shortly.
Christine Madrid French is a nationally known advocate for the study and preservation of American architecture. After working as a historian for the National Park Service, she directed the Modernism Program for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and taught at the University of Florida and the University of Central Florida. I consider her ten-year fight to save Neutra’s Cyclorama in Pennsylvania is considered one of the heroic legends in preservation, even though the bulldozer ultimately prevailed. Her new book, Critical Insights Series: Alfred Hitchcock, will be out soon.
Tom goes around the world! Frank is Shanghai'd! And George mumbles something about an evil lair! Learn more about what's coming up as USMR resumes March 6 with great guests.
In 1957, architect Jorn Utzon unexpectedly won the commission for the iconic Sydney Opera House. His submission was one of 233 designs from 32 countries, many of them from the most famous architects of the day. Saarinen described the design as "genius" and declared he could not endorse any other choice.
Yet building the project was rife with politics, cost overruns, incompetent cost estimators in the Australian government, and years and years of wrangling. Utzon was eventually fired, though no fault of his own. The Opera House was finally completed, and opened in 1973. Utzon was rehired in 1999 to develop a master plan and bring closure to a long-running drama.
Annalisa Capurro is an interior designer, writer and speaker working in the sectors of commercial, residential, hospitality, conservation/heritage and textile design, both in Australia and overseas. She is a design educator at Sydney Institute's Design Centre Enmore in Sydney, Australia where she specialises in teaching design studio, design processes and methodology, material technologies, architectural and design history and conservation/restoration studies.
She regularly presents public lectures including the Sydney Design Festival, Sydney Architecture Festival, Sydney Writers Festival and Modernism Week in Palm Springs. She also owns the iconic 1957 Sulman Award-winning Jack House in Sydney designed by architect Russell Jack, founding partner of the prestigious Australian architectural firm Allen Jack + Cottier.
Sean Knorsandi of the Paul Rudolph Foundation
Every year, Sarasota Mod in Sarasota FL throws a great conference on mid-century modern and this year was focused on Paul Rudolph, an architect who made his name in exciting coastal architecture before moving on to become Dean of Architecture at Yale. Rudolph's work is recognized around the world for bold, progressive masses. People are polarized around his work. Modernists praise his visionary designs of concrete and steel, others see them as cold and impractical.
Sean Khorsandi is on the board of the Paul Rudolph Foundation, dedicated to continuing and preserving Rudolph's work. George Smart spoke with him about architecture and about Rudolph during the Sarasota Mod conference last November.
Stephanie Grosskreutz of Visit Sarasota
Every year, Sarasota Mod in Sarasota FL throws a great conference on mid-century modern and this year was focused on Paul Rudolph, an architect who made his name in exciting coastal architecture before moving on to become Dean of Architecture at Yale. Rudolph's work is recognized around the world for bold, progressive masses. People are polarized around his work. Modernists praise his visionary designs of concrete and steel, others see them as cold and impractical.
Stephanie Grosskreutz works with Visit Sarasota, the folks who want you to travel down there and stay, dine, tour, and take in the scenery. We talk about how Modernist architecture has impacted Sarasota and has become one of the big draws for people to visit. George Smart spoke with her during the Sarasota Mod conference last November.
Every year, Sarasota Mod in Sarasota FL throws a great conference on mid-century modern and this year was focused on Paul Rudolph, an architect who made his name in exciting coastal architecture before moving on to become Dean of Architecture at Yale. Rudolph's work is recognized around the world for bold, progressive masses. People are polarized around his work. Modernists praise his visionary designs of concrete and steel, others see them as cold and impractical.
Carl Abbott is one of the most important architects of the Sarasota style of Modernist design. He studied at the University of Florida under Buckminster Fuller then received his Master’s from Yale with studies under Paul Rudolph and Louis Kahn. He has worked in Hawaii, in New York with I.M. Pei, and in London with classmates Lord Richard Rogers and Lord Norman Foster. George Smart spoke with him about architecture and about Rudolph during the Sarasota Mod conference last November.
Every year, Sarasota Mod in Sarasota FL throws a great conference on mid-century modern and this year was focused on Paul Rudolph, an architect who made his name in exciting coastal architecture before moving on to become Dean of Architecture at Yale. Rudolph's work is recognized around the world for bold, progressive masses. People are polarized around his work. Modernists praise his visionary designs of concrete and steel, others see them as cold and impractical.
Dr. Christopher Wilson teaches architecture and design history at Ringling College of Art and Design. He has been a board member of the Sarasota Architectural Foundation since 2012.
Every year, Sarasota Mod in Sarasota FL throws a great conference on mid-century modern and this year was focused on Paul Rudolph, an architect who made his name in exciting coastal architecture before moving on to become Dean of Architecture at Yale. Rudolph's work is recognized around the world for bold, progressive masses. People are polarized around his work. Modernists praise his visionary designs of concrete and steel, others see them as cold and impractical. Larry Scarpa is a principal in Pugh+Scarpa, award-winning architects. He worked for Rudolph and shares Rudolph's influence during a talk during the Sarasota Mod conference.
Every year, Sarasota Mod in Sarasota FL throws a great conference on mid-century modern and this year was focused on Paul Rudolph, an architect who made his name in exciting coastal architecture before moving on to become Dean of Architecture at Yale. Rudolph's work is recognized around the world for bold, progressive masses. People are polarized around his work. Modernists praise his visionary designs of concrete and steel, others see them as cold and impractical.
Ernst Wagner was Rudolph's partner and has been working since his death to create a legacy Rudolph organization. We spoke to Wagner during the Sarasota Mod conference.
Hi folks, here's a few minutes of fun, our "best of" clips from 2015. Happy New Year! George, Frank, and Tom
Todd Kosmerick is University Archivist for NC State University's Archives. He and his staff collect, preserve, and make accessible vast physical and online resources that document the growth and development of the university and its continued service to the people of North Carolina. It provides a resource for study and scholarship while ensuring that future generations will have resources available to understand and interpret the history and achievements of North Carolinians.
Designed by Terry Waugh, Harrelson Hall was the first round classroom structure ever built on a university campus. With a huge 206 foot diameter and a long winding ramp to the top floor, staff and faculty offices were located on the rim, while lecture rooms are along the inner part of the building. While folks generally admired the design concept, the building was generally hated as an academic building. The weird-shaped, windowless classrooms, the wacky and rarely working HVAC, the too-easy temptation of skateboarders, bicyclists, and remote controlled cars careening down the pedestrian ramp four floors, and for a while the complete lack of an elevator - all contributed. After a long period of service, abandonment, and use as temporary offices as newer buildings were built, it is scheduled for deconstruction/demolition. It was a really brilliant design idea that just didn't function.
Architect Harwell Hamilton Harris FAIA never reached the celebrity status of his peers such as Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright, yet his quieter career work stands as some of the most brilliant of the 20th century. Practicing primarily in California, Texas, and North Carolina, his achievements in residential, commercial, and academic settings earned national admiration and awards including the Richard Neutra Medal and an honorary doctorate from North Carolina State University.
Architect Frank Harmon FAIA was Harwell's student, close friend, and executor of his estate. Harmon was educated in North Carolina State University’s School of Design and at the Architectural Association in London. After working with McMinn, Norfleet & Wicker of Greensboro, Richard Meier in New York, and Harmon & Simeloff in London, he founded Frank Harmon architect in 1985. His firm has won more than 40 design awards. Harmon has received over 40 design awards, including the 2013 F. Carter Williams Gold Medal. Harmon announced his retirement in November 2015. Architect Jeffrey Lee writes: “Across the architectural profession, Frank Harmon is the face of North Carolina architecture.“
Author Lisa Germany Ziegler has written on architecture since the early 1980’s, contributing to publications such as Architectural Record, Harvard Design Magazine, and Progressive Architecture. Her beautiful and detailed 1991 book on Harwell Hamilton Harris traced the development of Harris's life and career and his honored place in American modernism. Her most recent book is Houses of the Sundown Sea: The Architectural Vision of Harry Gesner.
In the deep woods of Wisconsin, about an hour outside of Madison, sits one incredible house. If you didn't know otherwise, you'd be sure it was a Frank Lloyd Wright design. And you'd be close. It was designed by his son-in-law, William Wesley Peters. The place has been immaculately maintained and restored by a loving couple who are looking to downsize. You'll hear from those owners, their realtor Aaron Weber, and the challenges of selling one of the state's architecture masterpieces. It's at 4212 CO Road JJ, Black Earth, WI. Somebody's dream house is waiting for them!
Michael Hammond is co-founder and Editor in Chief of World Architecture News (WAN). He chairs the WAN AWARDS jury panel and produces the topical series of podcasts, Shop Talk which has featured many of the world’s leading architects over its 100+ programmes to date. Prior to WAN, Michael spent 25 years in construction project management before taking up writing; he authored Performing Architecture published by Merrell in 2006. He has also contributed many other architectural features to media including the Architects’ Journal, Architect, British Airways magazine Highlife, CNN, CBC, the BBC, The London Evening Standard and the Radio Southern Florida Architects’ Radio show.
Before the Beatles, before the Rolling Stones, architect, photographer, artist, and Jaguar-driving Brian Shawcroft was Raleigh North Carolina’s British invasion. He is now the state's oldest practicing architect.
Born in England, he followed a masters in architecture at MIT with jobs with Page & Steele in Toronto; Tomei and Maxwell in London; Slater Uren and Pike; back to Page and Steele; then Eduardo Catalano in 1960 where he worked on the Julliard School of Music in New York City. Henry Kamphoefner brought him to North Carolina to teach at the NCSU School of Design through 1968. In 1991, he was awarded the Kamphoefner Prize for achievement in the Modern Movement in Architecture. And each year, NC State gives a Brian Shawcroft Prize for hand drawing, now a lost art. He is the author of the book 50 Houses.
Craig Dykers, at just 28 years old, received international acclaim after winning the $350 million commission for the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. He is founder of the design firm Snøhetta, with offices in Oslo Norway and New York, architect for some of the most amazing modern buildings in the world. Snøhetta is the design architect for the James B. Hunt Jr. Library at NC State University.
Greg Raschke is the Associate Director for Collections & Scholarly Communication at NC State University. He's been deeply involved in the design and construction of the Hunt Library. You may recall he's a great friend of the show, having binge-listened earlier this year - and survived!
Learn more about the people and topics mentioned in this episode:
James B. Hunt Jr. Library * Snøhetta * Bookbot * Library of Alexandria (old) * Library of Alexandria (new) * Sex in Libraries * The Scream *
Aidan Buehler is 14 years old. He's an eighth grader in Chapel Hill NC with an interest in drafting. What he did next is remarkable. Instead of just piddling around on his computer like most kids, he contacted Chapel hill architect Lucy Carol Davis to be his mentor on a school-wide design competition. Aidan's house was one of the most elaborate projects. According to his interview with the News and Observer,
"Basically, I designed a house from start to finish,” he said, although it ended up being larger than planned. He laid out rooms and external design features, furnished the house, and added paint and textures. He did not include a plumbing system, electrical system, or internal wiring. “I did put in some vents and designed it so that, with some editing, it could be built legally I should hope,” he said. He got some of his ideas from architecture books he read. “For the most part, however, it was me experimenting with random ideas of mine and seeing if they looked good,” he said. “Although I did go into this project with ideas as to what qualities I wanted in my house, my model was constantly changing.” He estimates that he spent several hundred hours on the project.
George Smart of USModernist Radio chats with Aidan, his dad, Georg Buehler, and Lucy Carol Davis.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/chapel-hill-news/article29888074.html#storylink=cpy
Nathanial Kahn is a director and producer. He is also the son of architect Louis Kahn, one of the most influential architects of the 20th century. In 2003, he produced the Oscar-nominated film My Architect about the life and work of his dad, interviewing people who knew Kahn including Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson, and I.M. Pei. Kahn created modern buildings with the feel and presence of ancient ruins using concrete. His brilliant projects include the Four Freedoms Park, the Phillips Exeter Library, the Salk Institute, and his most famous work, the National Assembly building in Bangladesh.
Alexandra Lange is the architecture critic for Curbed and a columnist at Dezeen. She is a rising authority and a prolific writer for print and digital publications like Architect, Domus, Dwell, Metropolis, New York Magazine, and the New York Times. Previously a Loeb fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, she taught architecture criticism at New York University and is a leader in the new breed of digital curators, people who curate visually interesting exhibits you see on your screen and not inside a brick and mortar gallery or museum. She is the author of Writing About Architecture: Mastering the Language of Buildings and Cities.
Eames Demetrios is the grandson (and namesake) of Charles and Ray Eames and leads the Eames brand which has roared back into the public eye. His mission is communicating, preserving and extending the brilliant work of designers Charles and Ray Eames who were best known by the public for their furniture and for their 125 short films, including the much-heralded-and-still-relevant Powers of Ten. Their Eames Lounge chair for Herman Miller is one of the most popular furniture designs in the world. Demetrios is also creator of Kcymaerxthaere, a global work of three-dimensional fiction exploring stories of imaginary peoples, movements, even physical laws -- and then memorializing these stories on bronze plaques. He has written several books about Charles and Ray Eames—Including An Eames Primer, Eames: Beautiful Details, and The Furniture of Charles and Ray Eames.
Jerry Nowell ran North Carolina’s first all-contemporary furniture store, names, not surprisingly, Nowell’s Contemporary Furniture. He was the third generation of Nowell since 1905 to bring exciting designs like the Eames chair and many other iconic furnishings to the state. In 1968, Nowell's became the first all contemporary furniture store in North Carolina. It was also among the first furniture stores to challenge the “blue laws” prohibiting sales on Sunday and likely the first to hire black salespeople. Jerry closed the store a few years ago to spend more time with his family. The 20,000 sf store is greatly missed as a regional destination for Modernist house owners.
California interior designer *Brad Dunning grew up in Memphis and LA. He has early, wilder roots in the LA punk rock scene as part of the original Gun Club, a seminal noisy punk/blues band. Widely praised as designer to the stars such as Tom Ford, Sofia Coppola, and Demi Moore, Brad has been featured in Architectural Digest and created a look the magazine calls Cocktail Modern. Plus, he helped restore Neutra's famous Kaufmann House by Neutra in Palm Springs, where he’s been active for 20 years helping preserve MCM houses and buildings. Durham builder Leon Meyers* graduated from Duke University and after working for Chapel Hill’s well-known Security Building Company, he went solo in 1982 as LE Meyers Builders, later merged with BuildSense in Durham. Since then, Leon has become one of the most sought-after contractors for Modernist houses. Priority one message from Starfleet - somebody wrote a Star Trek book! The Tom Cruise of Modernist builders! George's second language! Guildmaster! Leon speaks French!
Learn more about the people and topics mentioned in this episode: Brad Dunning / Leon Meyers / Richard Neutra / Richard Neutra's Kaufmann House / Quincy Jones the architect / Quincy Jones the musician / Star Trek: The Original Series
The world's largest erector set: the Lustron was a house you put together with a screwdriver. It was metal, yet would never rust. It was ingeniously heated and insulated. It came on a truck ready for assembly. A brilliant design produced only a few years after WWII, the Lustron now has a cult following to repair and preserve them -- or assemble ones long in storage.
Author Tom Fetters is King of Lustrons, the go-to guy for anything about these unique houses. He also has interests in railroad history and dirigibles. His book The Lustron Home chronicles the history of the Lustron Corporation—how it started, why it failed, and what Lustron means to post-war America.
Virginia Faust is by day a realtor for Howard Perry and Walston and by night the research engine behind North Carolina Modernist Houses (NCMH), scouring the state to document Lustrons and other livable works of art. She developed a special love for Lustrons from growing up in Ohio where they were plentiful.
Find out what Frank gets in the mail! Finally, the difference between a blimp and a dirigible! And opportunities for owning your own Lustron!
Landscape architect Susan Saarinen, daughter of architect Eero Saarinen, granddaughter of architect Eliel Saarinen (pronounced sahrr-uh-nen), andRaymond Neutra, retired physician and epidemiologist in California, son of architect Richard Neutra (pronounced noy-tra).
In the 1950's when the general public really didn’t pay much attention to architects, Richard Neutra and Eero Saarinen were rockstars, creating buildings like the TWA Terminal at JFK and the Kaufmann house. They were each on the cover of TIME magazine and brilliantly shaped the period we now call mid-century Modernism.
In the architect’s families, however, art and architecture were not just buildings or occasional topics of conversation, they were a way of life. Growing up as the child of a well-known star in any profession can be thrilling – and also stressful. We'll talk with Susan and Raymond about growing up with genius.
Marvin Malecha is the Dean of the College of Design and Professor of Architecture at NC State University. He was President of the national AIA and Dean of the College of Environmental Design at California State Polytechnic University, where he worked closely with Neutra's wife Dione Neutra to save the famous VDL house as well as to protect Neutra's archives. Learn more about the people and topics mentioned in this episode: Richard Neutra / Eliel Saarinen / Eero Saarinen / Lillian Saarinen / Dione Neutra / Dion Neutra / Washington Dulles Airport / The St. Louis Arch / TWA's JFK Terminal / The Kaufmann House
George and Frank get updated on jello flavors! Eero Saarinen goes diving on Cape Cod! And, wait for it, we discover the real precautionary principle of epidemiology!
Justin Shubow is President of the National Civic Art Society, a Washington DC educational non-profit for the classical and humanistic tradition in public art and architecture. With a background in law, philosophy, comedy, and physics, his sharp wit informs and entertains through articles in Forbes and appearances before Congress and various Washington committees.
We talk about Frank Gehry's design for the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington DC, a project estimated to cost $150M that has dragged on since 1999. Shubow has been a vocal opponent of both the selection process that chose Gehry and Gehry's various designs for the memorial.
What happens when a lawyer, philosopher and physicist go into a bar? Our #1 fan Consuelo battles it out in Modernist musical chairs!
Learn more about the people and topics mentioned in this episode: Maya Lin / Vietnam Veterans Memorial / MLK Memorial / Civil Rights Memorial / 911 Memorial / FDR Memorial / National Civic Arts Society. Also in the studio, Jason Hart, Vinny Petrarca, and Katherine Hogan, winners of Jury honors in the 2015 George Matsumoto Prize for excellence in recent Modernist residential architecture.
Paul Rudolph was not as well-known as Frank Lloyd Wright but he designed some of the most fascinating and creative Modernist buildings in America. While inspiring a generation of architects, the public generally does not warm to his large brutalist designs, finding the intense use of concrete and steel to be ugly and oppressive. But hey, we love 'em, and today we welcome two passionate and willing-to-do-something-about-it architects who fight for Rudolph’s brilliant buildings from different parts of the country. Gene Kaufman has designed over $1B of hotels in New York City. In 2011, his firm Gene Kaufman Architect joined forces with the esteemed Modernist architecture firm Gwathmey Siegel; the result is Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman & Associates Architects. Gene talks about his attempt to save a building you can’t check into for the night, the Goshen government complex designed by Paul Rudolph.
Joe King is an architect and contractor practicing in Bradenton FL. With Christopher Domin, he is co-author of the book Rudolph: The Florida Houses. He has owned several Rudolph houses and is re-creating Rudolph's famous Walker Guest House for a national tour.
Noah Goldstein, the ark-itect! Why you don't want to see Joe King coming down the driveway with a crowbar! And those damned hotel air conditioners that blow the curtains up!
Learn more about the people and topics mentioned in this episode:
Paul Rudolph houses / Gene Kaufman / Rudolph: The Florida Houses / Paul Rudolph, rock star in Singapore / Yale Arts and Architecture building / Sarasota High School / Riverview High School / Rudolph Obituary / Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation / Sarasota MOD
Sarah Susanka is an internationally-known architect and author of the best-selling "Not So Big" series of books, which kicked off with The Not So Big House in 1997. Over the years, she has been featured on Oprah, Charlie Rose, and many architecture and design publications. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Monique Lombardelli is a San Francisco filmmaker, CEO, Realtor, and developer. She produced three documentary films, including Little Boxes and People in Glass Houses: The Legacy of Joseph Eichler. From her work on Eichler's much-loved homes in California, long out of production, she revived the brand and is launching them nationally.
What's up with America and big houses? Learn more about the people and topics mentioned in this episode:
Sarah Susanka / Monique Lombardelli / Joseph Eichler / The Not So Big Life Workshop / Las Vegas Eichler / Where Steve Jobs Grew Up
Houses like Eichler: Stoneson Brothers / Brown & Kaufman / Mackay Homes / Robert Rummer
Joe Kwon is the cellist for the internationally acclaimed band The Avett Brothers. He's the client of Robby Johnston and Craig Kerins, principals in the design/build firm Raleigh Architecture & Raleigh Construction. Block by block, they are developing a stretch of Raleigh's downtown into small, sustainable, walkable Modernist houses. Joe's recently built house is the third in what will be about a dozen completed within a three year timeframe.
Robby and Craig drink their way through Belgium! What's Joe's favorite room of the house?
Ever since Modernist houses hit the mainstream market in the 1950’s, the real estate community has largely stayed away. Unaware of history, contemptuous of design style, and overreacting to certain flaws, realtors can do more to scare buyers away than to close the deal.
Two Modernist realtors keep it real about these livable works of art.
Crosby Doe is one of the leading Modernist realtors in America. Since 1983 he has sold houses by internationally prominent architects including Richard Neutra, Harwell Hamilton Harris, Rudolph Schindler, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner, Charles Eames, Craig Ellwood, Pierre Koenig, and Frank Gehry.
Emilie Huin started in real estate only four years ago but has become one of the leading Modernist realtors in North Carolina. She sold (and preserved) an important and endangered Modernist house in Chapel Hill by the late Arthur Cogswell.
Crosby Doe's first sale (it was a Neutra)! Growing up with the Guild's in Durham! Life lessons from liposuction!
Imagine buying a lot, designing a house, getting all the neighborhood and city approvals, starting construction, then - boom - your neighbor sues to stop construction. Here's the background. You'll hear one couple's incredible story - and how it attracted worldwide coverage.
Louis Cherry has been an architect since 1983 and is principal of a design/build practice focusing on modern residential, commercial and institutional design. He is the husband of Marsha Gordon, associate professor of film studies at North Carolina State University.
Their contested house, aka Oakwood House, is at 516 Euclid, Raleigh. The house also has its own Twitter feed, independent of the owners. They honestly don't know who's behind the often-hilarious comments: @ModernOakwood.
Paul Goldberger is an architecture critic and winner of the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. He is the author of several books, including Why Architecture Matters, and wrote about the Cherry Gordon house for Vanity Fair.
Contact the guests @MarshaGGordon, @LCherry, and @paulgoldberger.
USModernist Radio's parent organization, North Carolina Modernist Houses, provided financial support to the Cherry's cause through its Legal Defense Fund.
John Morris is a Usability Engineer by day but by night he's the Batman of downtown architecture documenting buildings in Chicago and Raleigh. He's also a superfan of Modernist architect Milton Small Jr., student of Mies Van der Rohe.
Although Small died in 1992, his firm lived on through Small’s son Milton Small III of Small Kane Architects. We'll talk with John and Milton about the man they both admire.
Frank relives his Modernist childhood! Water heaters over the sink! Mt. Olive University! The masterpiece at 3515 Glenwood Avenue! John tries to speak Russian!
Author J. Michael Welton writes about architecture, art, and design for national and regional publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Dwell, and Architectural Record. His new book is "Drawing from Practice: Architects and the Meaning of Freehand."
One of the architects featured in the book is Jim Cutler, Seattle-area architect well-known for his work in sustainability. He also designed a little $66M house for Microsoft's Bill and Melinda Gates in the 1990's (with Peter Bohlin). Cutler is a passionate advocate for the return of freehand training in university architecture programs. His theory on how drawing affects thinking has huge implications for creativity in architecture.
The Ferrari of drawing pencils! Does Bill Gates' house use Windows Update? Does CAD make architects dumber? What area of the brain lights up when you draw? Anyone want to start up a Kickstarter campaign for the externalization of cognition? The first iPad-like product by Microsoft!
Christine Madrid French is one of America's foremost experts on Modernist preservation. She is co-founder of the Recent Past Preservation Network (the first Modernist preservation organization) and served as President for nine years. She pretty much knows everything modern from Bauhaus to Bob's Big Boy. We'll hear her brave, decade-long attempt to save the Modernist icon of Richard Neutra's Cyclorama at Gettysburg.
Learn about Mission 66! Was John Wayne a Modernist? What is brutalism and do you need handcuffs? And how about moving some Frank Gehry (again)!
Although actress Kelly Lynch appeared in Drugstore Cowboy, Roadhouse, Charlie's Angels, and the swanky Miami TV series Magic City, we love her movies about Modernist preservation. She's also got two killer Modernist houses in Los Angeles.
Myrick Howard has been President since 1978 of Preservation North Carolina, the state's premier preservation organization, and knows how to keep these works of art alive.
On this episode, learn how to win a best-dressed award for just $15! Choose the right chair for a Basic Instinct re-make! Protect your favorite Modernist house from the bulldozer!