USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

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...

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 Nat...

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 w...

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. La...

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...

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...

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 L...

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 interna...

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...

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 Museu...

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 prolif...

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 a...

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, sh...

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 book...

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...

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 au...

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,...

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...

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,...

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...

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...