USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week.  It's a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and you can even order martinis for breakfast. Yes, you can do that anywhere but you'll feel glamorous in Palm Springs. USModernist Radio's  George Smart  was there with keynote speakers and other special guests who...

Architect Ellen Cassilly worked in Paris with Christian DePortzamarc, who you'll recall was a winner of the Pritzker Prize, and Arata Isozaki in Tokyo, before coming to North Carolina.  After bringing exciting projects together for other firms, such as the NC Museum of Art Ampitheatre, she started Ellen Cassilly Architect in 1999.  She is featured in the book, Drawing From Practice, and she co-tea...

USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week.  It's a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and you can even order martinis for breakfast. Yes, you can do that anywhere but you'll feel glamorous in Palm Springs. USModernist Radio's  George Smart  was there with keynote speakers and other special guests who...

In this digital age, everyone's taking photos, billions of them, primarily with their phones.  We talk today about architectural photography, and how both digital and social changes in photography affect decisions about the kind of buildings we see built, the design competitions where photos play a part, and how you can take better photos of architecture you love, like your own house. Our first gu...

USModernist Radio goes to Palm Springs each February for the incredibly popular Modernism Week.  It's a fascinating array of sunshine, architecture, lectures, parties, tours, exhibits, and you can even order martinis for breakfast. Yes, you can do that anywhere but you'll feel glamorous in Palm Springs. USModernist Radio's  George Smart  was there with the week's keynote speakers and other special...

Richard Neutra was one of the world's most important architects, and today his work is even more popular.  Neutra designed more than 300 amazing Modernist houses in California and elsewhere. In 1949, Time Magazine featured Neutra on its cover and ranked him second only to  Frank Lloyd Wright  in American architecture. Neutra hired several architects who went on to independent success, including  G...

Gregory Ain  was inspired to become an architect after visiting Rudolf Schindler's  King's Road house. He worked for Richard Neutra as well as Harwell Hamilton Harris . As a result of a proposed housing project suspected of being communist by Senator Joseph McCarthy -- because it was racially integrated -- Ain was investigated by the FBI over 30 years.  He was considered the most dangerous archite...

Johnny Örbäck was about 47 when he had a fantastic idea.  It was 1999, and as Managing Director of a public housing agency in Malmo, Sweden, he decided to commission the world's most unique housing project from architect  Santiago Calatrava . Calatrava ,  known for wildly creative buildings and bridges all over the world is famous for being an architectural genius, and he's also famous for enormou...

Covering topics from England to the Congo, today's show features host George Smart and the stars, producers, and creators of the latest architecture documentaries, recorded in New York at the Architecture and Design Film Festival late last year.  George's first guest is Sarah Howitt, Producer and Director of  Building Hope: The Maggie's Centres, beautiful architect-designed facilities for patients...

Hugh Hefner passed away last year after decades at the helm of Playboy magazine, the first mainstream magazine featuring nude centerfolds that depending on your point of view, liberated women, demeaned women, or both.  But you may not know that for nearly 20 years, Playboy  promoted Modernist design like no other publication. Features on Frank Lloyd Wright, Bucky Fuller, Mies Van Der Rohe, Charles...

Seattle has coffee, and rain, and Amazon, and amazing Tom Kundig houses.  It also has our guest today, Eugenia Woo , one of Seattle's top advocates for Modernist historic preservation. She is the director of preservation services at  Historic Seattle  and is a co-founder and board member of  Docomomo WEWA . Founded in 1974, Historic Seattle preserves Seattle's architectural legacy. Eugenia has a B...

From the Architecture and Design Film Festival in New York City, held late last year, host George Smart's first guests are Ted Bosley and Lori Korngeibel talking about the Gamble House in Pasadena, America's most famous Arts and Crafts house, and later, George is joined by Catherine Ledner and Roy Beeson , creators of a new documentary about Catherine's father, New Orleans architect Albert Ledner...

Tammy Hauser is Executive Director for the Center for Architecture Sarasota, a nexus for midcentury Modernist houses.  She's the CEO of Blue Sky Thinking, a consulting firm based in Sarasota for nonprofit organizations. This spring, the Center for Architecture Sarasota hosts an exhibition on Larry Scarpa , a Modernist architect based in Los Angeles, who uses conventional materials in unexpected wa...

You may recall that a few months ago, host  George Smart interviewed Kyle Bergman , director of the Architecture and Design Film Festival in New York City.  Today's special bonus edition features George and the stars, producers, and creators of the latest architecture documentaries, recorded in New York at the Architecture and Design Film Festival late last year.   Many Americans think the last Wo...

Hawai'i is full of Modernist architecture!  Today we talk with  Dean Sakamoto who lives and works in both Hawai'i and Connecticut. He worked with the Univ of Hawai'i Department of Urban and Regional planning and he founded SHADE, Hawai'i's first public interest design organization that plans designs and builds in the rapidly urbanizing tropics.  He also is on the board of DOCOMOMO Hawai'i which ha...

There are certain Modernist houses that just can't be captured in a photo, a video, or even a 3D rendering. For example, Fallingwater in Pennsylvania is considered  Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest residential work.  It continues to attract millions of people, and in 1991 the AIA named Fallingwater the "best all-time work of American architecture. "  Denise Miner is   Public Tour Supervisor at Fallin...

After WWII, states looked at their aging capitol buildings and considered sweeping new plans to bring technology, commerce, government, and even the performing arts into the full 20th century.  One of the few state capitols to actually achieve this was Albany NY.  The Empire State Plaza is series of Modernist office and cultural buildings that started in the late 1950's, and it's gorgeous.  It's a...

Australian comedian Tim "Rosso" Ross has starred in countless Australian radio and TV series.  He's a writer for Men's Style Australia, Rolling Stone and Sydney Magazine.  He's interviewed and talked with celebrities like Will Farrell, John C. O'Reilly, and Hugh Jackman through shows such as Merrick and Rosso Unplanned , The B Team , Uncharted, Facing the Hangover, and Australia Versus.  He's a sp...

Roberta Leighton "runs the place" for owner Jim Goldstein at the Sheats Goldstein house in Los Angeles, designed by John Lautner . She manages hundreds of movie, commercial, and photo shoots at the house, one of the country's most iconic. One of the most famous movies shot there was The Big Lebowski.  Roberta has also been in a ton of some of the movies and shows we love.  She was Bill Murray's gi...

Architect Edward Durell Stone  like many of his generation fell in love with Modernism. His first independent commission was a 1933 Modernist house for Richard Mandel , which led to many other prominent commissions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Kennedy Center in Washington.  Stone is one of the few architects to make the cover of TIME. Business Week called Stone "the man w...

Design guru and critic Stephen Bayley came to prominence in the 1980's curating the Boilerhouse Project at the  Victoria and Albert Museum and later created London's Design Museum.  In the 1990's he was briefly the creative director for a notoriously expensive and bureaucratic public boondoogle called the Millennium Dome (now the 02 Arena), and in 2007 he became The Observer ' s architecture and d...

Emmy-winning filmmaker Jake Gorst is the Steven Spielberg of design documentaries, capturing mid-century modern architecture in at least 12 films on modern design, including a great series on Palm Springs architects such as E. Stewart Williams, Donald Wexler, and Bill Krisel - plus Modern Tide, Modern Ruin with past guest Matthew Silva, Beyond the Beach: The Life and Death of Norman Jaffe, and the...

Rudolph Michael Schindler , who went by Michael, was one of the most important Modernist architects of the 20 th century, yet he is largely unknown to the public outside California.  Frank Lloyd Wright hired him in 1918, and soon he was running Wright's studio in Oak Park the later in Los Angeles. Schindler and Wright argued frequently and eventually Schindler quit, becoming a huge success on his...

What makes a house too big?  And is it really anyone's business other than the owner?  We talk with Thomas Bena and Mollie Doyle , stars and creators of the new documentary One Big Home, based in Martha's Vineyard MA.  Like many wealthy coastal communities, new homes there are not the cottages which have dominated the area for centuries.  10,000 sf and 20,000sf and even larger McMansions started a...

Fire Island, just 50 miles from New York City, was one of the few gathering places in the 1950's where gay people could feel safe in a world that certainly did not offer such a welcome.  It was also a haven for the creative class from New York and LA who built houses by Andrew Geller, Harry Bates , and the unbelievably attractive Horace Gifford . Our guest is Chris Rawlins , architect and author o...