USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

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...

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...

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...

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...

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:   E...

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...

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 circul...

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 butte...

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 arc...

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...

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...

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...

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 ar...

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 ,...

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 Neutr...

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...

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 th...

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 archit...

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...

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 generat...

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...

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...

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 C...

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.