USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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 Sin...

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 ye...

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,...

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 creati...

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 Bio...

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 stor...

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.  Geor...

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...

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 m...

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...

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 natural...