USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

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...

Ever wondered how the famed children's book Knuffle Bunny intersects with thoughtful urban planning?  Probably not. However, today's guest is well-versed in both! Allison Arieff is editorial director of SPUR, a San Francisco-based thinktank promoting urban planning in the Bay area. Allison writes about architecture, design, and cities for the New York Times, California Sunday, Wired, MIT Technolog...

One of the problems with preserving futuristic-looking Modernist buildings is that they just don't look that old.  They aren't universally loved, in fact some of them weren't that popular when they were built.  The World Monuments Fund (WMF) is a private nonprofit organization to decelerate the destruction of important artistic treasures throughout the world.  You might have heard of the Leaning T...

Host George Smart   reports from the USModernist trip to London last May.  He visits architect Alison Brooks who has won the triple crown of the UK's most prestigious awards for architecture: the RIBA Stirling Prize, the Manser Medal and the Stephen Lawrence Prize. Do you know you've arrived as an architect when your building gets a nickname?  And, for the first time, you'll hear the guys all sing...

Host George Smart reports from February's Modernism Week in Palm Springs, the center for all things Mid-Century Modernist!  He spoke poolside from the Hotel Skylark with keynote speakers from the amazing week of design, art, food, lectures, movies - a delightful week. George talks with Penelope Seidler , her daughter Polly Seidler , and documentary producer Daryl Dellora who created a compelling d...

June is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Frank Lloyd Wright , the most famous architect in the world, still showing off 58 years after his death. Few architects have come close to Wright's arrogance, his brilliance, and his incredible output that's still with us plus buildings he designed that never got built. Today we talk with Eric Lloyd Wright , grandson of Frank, and son of Frank Lloyd Wr...

Host George Smart reports from February's Modernism Week in Palm Springs, ground zero for all things Mid-Century Modernist!  He spoke poolside from the Hotel Skylark with keynote speakers from the week. And today is Indiana day! Todd Zeiger is the Northern Regional Director for Indiana Landmarks Director, a nonprofit saving significant and meaningful places.  He's been particularly working saving...

Kate Wagner created the riotously popular blog McMansionhell.com where she tears into the impractically large, ridiculously constructed, and often hilariously furnished monuments to wealth misspent.  As a writer for Curbed and other design publications, she has appeared on 99% Invisible and has her own TEDx talk.  Like us, she's a fan of Modernist evil lairs, writing on buildings used in film to d...

Host George Smart reports from February's Modernism Week in Palm Springs, the Mecca for all things Mid-Century Modernist!  He spoke poolside from the Hotel Skylark with keynote speakers from the week. Annalisa Capurro, aka Ms. Modernism, is a interior designer, design educator, architectural historian, speaker, writer, preservationist, MCM photographer, and mid-century design afficionado who lives...

A lot of Modernist houses you love from the 1950's and 1960's are going the way of unfortunate "renovations" or the bulldozer, largely because few people are aware of their architectural significance.  Although most houses by famous architects are on lists, it's difficult to find where they are actually located. We talk with two expert house trackers who have between them documented thousands of h...

Host   George Smart   reports from February's Modernism Week in Palm Springs, the Mecca for all things Mid-Century Modernist!  He spoke poolside from the Hotel Skylark with keynote speakers from the amazing annual event. Bill Earls is the author of The Harvard Five in New Canaan, Modernist houses by Breuer , Gores, Johansen, Johnson , and Noyes.  A virtual tour of thirty-five landmark houses, 1947...

Today we explore two different approaches to reviving Modernist buildings: preserving them or building them from scratch! Michael Miner is a documentary filmmaker who since 2002 has devoted his career entirely to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, chronicling the master architect's buildings in a series of films. Miner's first Wright film, Sacred Spaces , was completed in 2005 followed by A Child of...

Host George Smart reports from February's Modernism Week in Palm Springs, the Mecca for all things Modernist!  He spoke poolside from the Hotel Skylark with keynote speakers from the week. Alan Hess is a journalist, historian, architect, and author with 19 books specifically addressing mid-century modernism and countless appearances in architecture documentaries.  He's the Samuel L. Jackson of arc...