Us Modernist Radio - Architecture You Love

We’ve got a full roster of guests from Modernism Week 2023 in Palm Springs. Speaking on famous midcentury architects and designers, you'll hear from Jacques Caussin on Raymond Loewy, Lila Cohen on Herb Greene, Alan Hess on Googie architecture, and Michelangelo Sabatino and Maristella Casciato on Carlo Mollino.

Today, our world is New York City, where you’ll hear conversations between George and former editor-in-chief of Architectural Record Cathleen McGuigan, architecture photographer and documentary filmmaker Bilyana Dimitrova, architect Adam Beaulieu of COOKFOX, and Common Edge editor Martin Pedersen.

Nowhere in the world celebrates Modernism better than Modernism Week in Palm Springs, California. Every February, they have a weeklong architecture and design festival, which actually lasts 11 days,  and USModernist Radio was there interviewing keynote speakers plus special guests at the USModernist compound, aka poolside at the hip Hotel Skylark. Our 2023 coverage kicks off with architecture critic, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Blair Kamin. Now retired from the Tribune, his latest book project, Who Is the City For?, pairs a selection of his essays about the inequities in Chicago’s built environment with photographs by past podcast guest Lee Bey.  Later on, from a Bill Krisel house in Palm Springs, musical guest Cheryl Bentyne of the Manhattan Transfer, famous for songs like Operator and Boy From New York City.  They’ve won 10 Grammys, and this year, they’re on their 50th anniversary and final world tour.

You just can’t underestimate the satisfaction of a great office chair.  We spend most of our waking lives at work, often sitting, so comfort is important.  And for many, the location of work has changed.  Accelerated by the pandemic, your workplace is as likely to be a kitchen or den as it is a floor of offices. The KNOLL company had some of the most celebrated chairs in the world including Eero Saarinen’s womb and tulip chairs, the Barcelona chair by Mies Van der Rohe, and the Wassilly chair by Marcel Breuer.  Herman Miller was famous for the Aeron chair, the Noguchi table, the Marshmallow sofa, and the Eames Lounge Chair, among many others.  These companies have been the leaders in well-designed, comfortable office furniture for generations, and in 2021 they merged.  With us today is Ryan Anderson, vice president for global research and insights at MillerKnoll – and podcast host of Looking Forward: Conversations about the Future of Work. Later on, jazz with the remarkable Tony Desare.  

The Architecture and Design Film Festival, or ADFF, brings the stars, producers, and creators to premiere their latest documentaries. ADFF Executive Director Kyle Bergman curates visually wonderful, thought-provoking, and faithfully documented films that capture the brilliance of architects, artists, and significant buildings around the world.  Bergman started the series in New York and now it’s in major cities here and abroad, and the pandemic ushered in an online series you can view from home.  Today we talk to the people behind two films from the ADFF.  Adrian Dorschner and Thomas Beyer created the film Robin Hood Gardens, the story of a concrete housing project in London, loved by architecture fans but unloved by residents and critics, including King Charles. Later, you’ll learn about Winy Maas, founder of world class architects MVRDV in the film Under Tomorrow’s Sky, with director Jan Louter.

G. E. Kidder Smith was a trained architect, an architectural historian, and an architectural A prolific scholar, teacher, and author, he is the subject of a new book by Angelo Maggi.  Joining us today from Switzerland is Kidder’s son, internationally acclaimed lutist, or is it lutenist, Hoppy Smith, and from Chicago architectural historian and author Michelangelo Sabatino, who wrote the forward to the book.  We’re also heading to the Motor City to talk with Detroit architect Michael Poris of McIntosh Poris, helping bring back that city back from some pretty bleak times. Later on, music with returning jazz artist, the delightful Diana Panton. 

One Weekend - Two John Lautner Houses! The Kelly Lynch and Mitch Glazer Cocktail Party at the Harvey House, Saturday, April 22, 5-8pm. Explore one of the most envied houses in America! You'll share a beautiful evening overlooking downtown Los Angeles, the Griffith Observatory, and the Hollywood sign through astonishing views. You'll enjoy delicious appetizers plus signature cocktails provided by Vermont Spirits, and in the famous living room...vivacious entertainment by LA jazz vocalist Staci Griesbach and her band. The Silvertop Tour, Sunday, April 23, 12-5pm.  Silvertop is the crown jewel of Silver Lake! The 1964 Reiner-Burchill Residence was designed by John Lautner and built by Wally Niewiadomski. Reiner's business got in trouble and the house sat for a decade, unfinished. In 1974, new owners Jacklyn and Phillip Burchill engaged Lautner to complete it. In 2014, the iconic house was renovated by architect and "Mayor" of Silver Lake, Barbara Bestor.  All events benefit USModernist, a 501C3 nonprofit educa

Los Angeles is the epicenter of Modernist houses.  There are so many in the TMZ that it would take years to see even half of them. Because of sheer numbers, LA is also the epicenter for serial Modernists – those who have owned more than one Modernist house.  And we owe that group huge thanks, because they are the people investing huge amounts, often more than they probably should, to preserve iconic houses by important Modernist architects and preventing these houses from being torn down.  Joining us from Los Angeles Susan Orlean and John Gillespie, talking about their love affair with four Modernist homes. 

We’re going all over the place today, from Bentonville Arkansas to New York City to Indianapolis Indiana with guests Dylan Turk of the Crystal Bridges Museum, Kate Scott of NABR, a development firm doing interesting things with Bjarke Ingels, and Vess Ruchtenberg, grandson of Jan Ruhtenberg, one of the most influential architects and designers you’ve never heard of. 

As New Yorkers grew more prosperous in the 1960’s, they wanted to escape to the Hamptons of Long Island, a place at the time of mostly farmland – and where summer is a verb.  After working briefly for Philip Johnson, architect Norman Jaffe set up his own practice and within a few years everybody who was anybody in New York society wanted a Jaffe house.  Known for meticulous design and detail, and unrelenting creativity, Jaffe soon became top gun in Hamptons Modernism. But by 1993, Jaffe was stricken with prostate cancer, an unhappy marriage, and profound disillusionment from affluent and demanding clients who often refused to pay what they owed.  It did not end well.  Joining us today in our continuing series, Children of Genius, is his son, architect and artist Miles Jaffe. 

Returning guest Frances Anderton has been telling stories and distilling ideas about design, architecture, and the cityscape of Los Angeles in print and broadcast media and at public events since 1991. Born and raised in Bath, England, Frances earned a degree in architecture at the University College of London. After serving as associate editor at Architecture Review, during which she was exposed to Los Angeles’s modernist wonders, she moved to the States, where she became the host of the wildly popular public radio program DnA: Design and Architecture. Her latest project is the book Common Ground: Multifamily Housing in Los Angeles.  She’s on the board of Modernism Week and is a frequent speaker on architecture around the country. 

It’s our Valentine's Day show, and what could be better than being in love?  Oh man, your brain is on a euphoric, crazy, often stupid, out of your mind focus on someone or some building that lights you up.  You can’t stop checking messages, you can’t stop googling.  Your heart is racing, and your body is a circus of feel-good chemicals.  Dopamine revs you up, and serotonin falls, taking your rational old self right into Hallmark card territory – and cutting your appetite.  Adrenaline and nor-epinephrine kick in, then oxytocin like a big teddy bear, comes in for the cuddle.  Are we talking about people, or Modernist architecture?  Today it’s both, with three couples merging their personal and professional passions.  First up, curator Sascha Feldman and architect Jacob Esocoff, and interior architects Christine Stucker and James Veal.  Later, music from the fjords with Norwegian jazz couple Heidi Skjerve and Daniel Formo.

Topeka Kansas is the home of the famous Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education that ruled against segregation, it’s where Annette Bening and Katrina of Katrina and the Waves grew up.  It’s where Wil Wheaton of Star Trek used to party with Penn Gillette.   It’s where Dr. Phil started … a health club…. with his dad in 1971, well before being discovered by Oprah when the beef industry sued her.  And it’s the home of Plains Modern, a small but intrepid group battling to save Kansas’s modernist heritage, specifically one particular state office building.  Joining us today are architect and professor Michael Grogan of Plains Modern and attorney Paul Post. 

Architecture is a tough field, one of the most demanding in terms of academic work.  Once you graduate, a Masters Degree in something else is usually needed.  Then entry level pay is seldom great, and everyone, we mean everyone – is a critic.  Back in the 20th century, when Modernism had it’s heyday, the small number of black architects had it even harder, yet - they quietly created homes and buildings across America that with a few exceptions, like Paul Williams, rarely got any fame or press.  White people don’t think of midcentury modern being in Black neighborhoods or created by Black architects – but there’s actually quite a lot.  Today’s guest Jerald Cooper created the wildly popular Hood Century Instagram account seeking out Black-designed Modernist architecture, starting in his own town of Cincinnati.

Los Angeles architect Ray Kappe went on his own in 1954, completing dozens of Modernist houses and teaching. After serving as Founding Chairman of the Department of Architecture at Cal Poly Pomona, Kappe resigned in 1972 and started the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC) which is the Hogwarts of architecture, turned out several thousand graduates, and is considered one of the top architecture schools in the country. Ray died in his 90’s in 2019, but joining us from Los Angeles is his wife and SCI-ARC co-founder Shelly Kappe and their son, Finn Kappe. Later on, jazz from the UK with Claire Martin.

If your Mom or Dad is an architect, architecture gets into your DNA whether you like it or not, and one day, it’s gonna come out.  For one amazing renaissance woman, an artist, writer, investment banker, film producer, tattoo artist agent, and economic development consultant, she had to go all the way to Iowa to buy her dream house - by Frank Lloyd Wright - and now she owns it, at least legally.  As all Wright owners eventually discover, pretty soon the house owns you. Joining us is the new buyer of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Alsop House in Oskaloosa Iowa, Mia Reed, daughter of famed Florida/North Carolina architect Chuck Reed.

Joining us today is Los Angeles architect Steven Ehrlich of Ehrlich Yahai Rhee Chaney.  Just like we preserve Wright and Neutra and Schindler and Lautner now, in the future we’ll be working to save Modernist houses by this 40-person firm, honored with over 150 awards including the AIA National Firm Award and 9 national AIA design awards. Later on in the show, music with Dutch jazz vocalist Laura Fygi!

Kicking off things for 2023 is Lee Bey, Chicago architecture critic,  photographer for the new book Who Is the City For? with Blair Kamin, and the author of Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side.  Later on, we turn up the heat with grillmaster Greg Sages, also the Executive Director of The Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. 

Since the 1950’s, the US Government has hired Modernist architects like Edward Durell Stone, John Johansen, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, and more recently Kieran Timberlake to design US Embassies all over the world.  Modernism most clearly expresses the idea of freedom and these buildings are a showcase for America.  But as Dr. Phil might say, “how’s that working for us?” Joining us are Angel Dizon, who supervised $2B worth of construction projects for the US State Department and is now with the GSA - and returning podcast guest Mina Chow, architecture professor at USC and producer of the documentary Face of a Nation: What Happened to the World’s Fair?  Later on, musical guest Oleta Adams. 

It’s our holiday show on USModernist Radio!  Co-hosting with George and Tom is Raleigh architect Erin Sterling Lewis, with McGill University professor Sarah Moser on glamourous Modernist fantasy cities we drool about in glossy architecture magazines, and later on, special musical guest, the legendary Brenda Lee, to rock us yet again around the Christmas tree!