USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

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 wi...

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 arch...

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 Mo...

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 a...

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 building...

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...

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 mid...

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 en...

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 Hyper...

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 G...

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...

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)...

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...

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...

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 beca...

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...

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...

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 (...

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 E...

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 a...

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 base...

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, eleve...

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...

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...