USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

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. ...

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...

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 Geor...

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...

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...

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 incred...

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.  Joini...

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 wor...

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....

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 Pa...

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 Ri...

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 Raymo...

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...

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 Sta...

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...

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 th...

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,...

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 Brube...

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...

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 t...

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 Lu...

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 p...