USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love

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.

Today you'll meet two CEO's of HOK, one of the most successful architecture firms in the world, past CEO Patrick MacLeamy and current CEO Bill Hellmuth .  Every architecture student knows HOK, and it's one of the largest design firms in the US with 1800 team members.  Since 1955, HOK has designed hundreds of major projects like the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in DC, Apple's first maj...

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.  Today in the first of two shows about architecture-related movies taped at Modernism Week, host George Smart talks with filmmakers Jake and Tracey Gorst of Frey Part 2: The Architectural Interpreter,...

Today on USModernist Radio it's a full slate of great guests:  art collector, model collector, race car driver, softball player, and architect Ronnette Riley, project lead for the Lipstick Building in New York designed by Philip Johnson . Later on, Virginia Faust talks about the venerable Lustron, the house of the future that didn't make it, plus special musical guest Leonardo with the world's onl...

Other than Frank Sinatra, there are few people who are so tightly woven into the spirit of mid-century culture than 1950's Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe . Sometime later this year, plans call for a nearly 30 foot tall statue of her in the famous blowing white dress to return to Palm Springs as a permanent home.  In her day, Marilyn was as big as any celebrity you could name.  She was involved with...

In a mid-century world way before Instagram, people kept up with the latest buildings primarily through architecture magazines.  Although a few titles like Architecture Record are still going, there were many exceptional publications that in their heyday from 1945-1970 reached millions of readers across the US and the World. Today we welcome John Morris Dixon , the last editor of one of those grea...

Craig Ellwood   was one of the most exciting people in American architecture. He took Los Angeles by storm and no one since has fully captured his personal style or his incredible story - but that's on the way.   Although he took structural engineering courses at UCLA, Ellwood was not a licensed architect, but that did not matter to him or to his clients. Ellwood was a true design genius. Ellwood...

Skidmore Owings and Merrill, which sounds like a law firm your uncle Mitch might work at, created international airports, stunningly tall skyscrapers, universities, flagship museums, and landmark corporate headquarters since the 1930's. In its heyday it was the Amazon of design firms, one of the largest in the world, with projects such as the 1973 Sears/Willis Tower in Chicago, the 2010 Burj Khali...

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. This was the fifth year USModernist has been at Modernism Week, talking poolside at the USModernist Compound, aka the hip Hotel Skylark, with nearly all the keynote speakers, authors, and special gues...

In a world before the internet, World's Fairs were the killer app of the 19 th and most of the 20 th centuries.  Countries would assemble at a central place for about 6 months and build pavilions, each sharing their nation's technology, culture, and national sources of pride, symbols, heroes, and achievements.  If you've ever been to Epcot at Disney World, you get the idea.  There were two World's...

Each fall, there's a cool art and design gathering called WestEdge Design Fair in Santa Monica.  It's held in the Barker Hanger, an enormous space at the Santa Monica airport.  This year, USModernist's George Smart moderated two panels with some of the most well-known designers from around America and the UK. What you're about to hear is one of those panels, Epic Spaces and Favorite Places, with g...

From London to Tokyo to Dubai, the skyscraper is a part of every modern city, but no city has done it better, or longer, than New York. Starting in the 1920's, the booming economy, use of steel, and advanced engineering took skyscrapers into reality for the first time.  Hey, who wakes up one day and says "Hey, I want to create a museum"?  Carol Willis does.  In 1996, she founded and still runs the...

Host George Smart cashed in a few frequent flyer miles to report from New York City, doing a walk and talk around the innovatively designed COOKFOX architecture office with project leader Bethany Borel .  Later on George visits author Anthony Alofsin , whose new book Wright and New York : the Making of America's Architect explores Frank Lloyd Wright's years in the Big Apple. 

What could be better than to make a living writing about Modernist architecture?  Today on the show all the way from the UK, its author Dominic Bradbury , author of the new book Atlas of Mid-Century Modern Houses.  Bradbury is a writer and freelance journalist specializing in architecture, design, real estate, and travel, writing over 20 over twenty books, at least one of which you have on your co...