USModernist Radio - Architecture You Love – Détails, épisodes et analyse

It’s a sad day in the studio, because this is the last Modernism Week show of 2024.  We’ve brought you 11 wonderful episodes from our annual pilgrimage, and today wraps up the series with returning guests mid-century historian Charles Phoenix; Natascha Drabbe of iconichouses.org; traveling all the way from Canberra, Australia, Phillip Jones the Martini Whisperer; and Lautner homeowner Andrew Vottero.

Today we’re talking about an architecture TV series spanning the globe and a new design documentary.  Joining us is ByDesign’s Mike Chapman and IBM archivist Jamie Martin, who is featured in the new documentary Modernism Inc.  Later, musical guest Paget Moren.

Today, we’ll talk to three people who live in Palm Springs: the folks who work to document, share, and safeguard Palm Springs’ heritage – and gladly share their stories. First, expert tour guides John Stark and Trevor O’Donnell. Later on, the President of the Palm Springs Plaza Theatre Foundation, JR Roberts, working to bring back the theatre to its full glory.  

In this our last show from Modernism Week 2022, we close out with fascinating poolside conversations with speakers from the week!

Aaron Betsky is a household name, if your house is full of architects.  He’s a critic, curator, educator, and lecturer who is Director of the Virginia Tech School of Architecture and Design.  Betsky is joined today with returning podcast guest Andrew Pielage, an internationally published architecture and travel photographer who, like Star Trek, is on a multi-year mission to photograph every single Frank Lloyd Wright building. Aaron and Andrew brought us the new book 50 Lessons to Learn from Frank Lloyd Wright.

Returning guest, architect and author Alan Hess has been on this show more times than anyone.  If you’re old enough to remember Johnny Carson, Alan is the Charles Nelson Reilly of USModernist Radio.  A longtime advocate for Modernist preservation, he is a prolific author with some 20 books. He’s the top presenter every year at Modernism Week.

Returning guest, fashion designer, and CEO Trina Turk has one of the most exciting brands of brightly colorful, wildly fun clothing for both men and women. Trina is also a devoted serial Modernist, having owned many houses, and an active philanthropist, contributing to preservation causes, including the USModernist Advisory Board and the fight to Move Marilyn in Palm Springs.  Last February, she spoke at Modernism Week to discuss the influence of another important lifestyle entrepreneur and tastemaker, Vera Neumann.

Edward Killingsworth graduated from USC in 1940 and was the most prolific creator of Case Study Houses – a project sponsored by Arts and Architecture Magazine to provide affordable housing for returning WWII soldiers and their families.  These architects included Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Rodney Walker, and the fast and furious Craig Ellwood, among others. Killingsworth, who died in 2004, won 42 AIA award and was campus architect for Cal State Long Beach for more than 40 years. Today’s guest knew Killingsworth well and honeymooned in one of his hotels, the Kapalua Bay Hotel in Maui, sadly destroyed in 2006.  Architect Kelly Sutherlin McLeod of Long Beach specializes in historic preservation projects, working on buildings by Richard Neutra and Ed Killingworth, among many others.  She also bought his office!  Later on, swing jazz with musical guest Laura Windley.  

Colin Flavin, founder of Flavin Architects, has been building modern houses in New England for more than 30 years. An avid sketch artist and an MIT grad, Colin spoke at Modernism Week on East Coast modernist residential architecture and its impact on community design. 

Author and artist Justin Beal went to Yale and USC and his art is included in the permanent collections of the Albright Knox Museum, the Hammer Museum, and the LA Museum of Contemporary Art. Now a professor at Hunter College, Justin’s most recent project is Sandfuture, a look at life and work of Minoru Yamasaki, who came to fame through the Lambert-St. Louis airport and his most heralded creation, the original World  Trade Center twin towers in New York City. 

Later on, we visit with pop and jazz superstar Toni Tennille, the next Dolly Levi, and then sadly, our last segment with TikTok design critic Louisa Whitmore, as she leaves the show to attend University and a bright promising future.

Going back as far as Neutra and Schindler, it has always been hard as an architect to specialize in houses - and even harder to specialize in Modernist houses. Clients, even the most forward-thinking, collaborative, affluent clients, are time-consuming - when for the same amount of time you could design a 120,000 square foot office building for a much bigger fee. So those architects who are prolific with modernist houses and do it well are hard to find - and we love'em. Toshiko Mori, Annabelle Selldorf, Rick Joy, and past podcast guests Tom Kundig and Will Bruder are in this league, and with them, today's guest - architect and furniture designer David Thompson of Assembledge+ in Los Angeles. The son of architect Richard Thompson, David worked for Syndesis and Lorcan O'Herlihy before establishing Assembledge+ in 1997. David's houses are classic California Modernism, and if you want him to design your new house, lure him with sushi and a freshly-made Manhattan. Later on, musical guest Louise Cappi and a few minutes with TikTok design critic Louisa Whitmore.

Architect Eddie Jones is founder of Jones Studio, based in Phoenix AZ.  He began practice in 1979, starting out with a T-square, some pencils, and a desk in his Ralph Haver-designed house.  His book, Jones Studio House: Sensual Modernism, looks back on Eddie’s quiet yet influential forty-year career through photos and personal stories.

Award-winning landscape architect Signe Nielsen designed the amazing landscape of Little Island at Pier 55 in New York City, a magnificent “floating park” above the Hudson River that opened in May 2021.  As founding principal of Matthews Nielsen Landscape Architects, Signe has spent more than 25 years reinvigorating modern urban spaces, including midcentury icons such as the Lincoln Center and the TWA Hotel. She is a professor of urban design and landscape architecture at Pratt and is past president of the New York City Public Design Commission.

Eero Saarinen, who died in 1961, is now one of the most well-known and respected Modernist architects in history, famous for the St. Louis Arch, the TWA Terminal at JFK, Dulles Airport, and many other innovative projects. More that about any other architect, his work signaled an optimistic future, a sweeping beautiful, curvy future that was going to require, as the song would say decades later, shades. But Saarinen wasn't always so well-known, and for about eight years before his death, there was one incredibly smart and talented woman who built and managed Saarinen's reputation into the mega-star he is today. We are joined by author Eva Hagberg, with the new book When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect. And later, somewhat miraculously, we found Ruth Clements Pudists, Eero Saarinen's secretary, still in her 90's. With a memory better than any of us, she was there during the growth of the Saarinen practice and made arrangements with Aline when he died.

Today we travel to three sunny destinations featured at this year’s Modernism Week lectures: Florida, Cuba, and San Diego.

The New York Times calls Charles Phoenix “the King of Retro” for his spirited and hilarious slide shows celebrating the midcentury American lifestyle. He started collecting vintage Kodachrome slides in the 1990s and has been giving talks and creating colorful coffee table books, a YouTube video series of classic car joyrides, and fun double decker bus tours during Modernism Week. 90 miles south of Florida, there’s Cuba. The US can’t quite decide whether we’re still mad at Cuba, but the architecture lives on and architect Monty Freeman knows all about it. An award-winning New York architect who has repurposed timeless, modern spaces around the world, Monty is an expert on Cuban architecture and leads architectural tours when the US allows it. Keith York buys and sells architect-designed homes in San Diego. He created the Modern San Diego website to help the community understand the area’s rich architectural heritage and recently curated the exhibit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Legacy in San Diego. He is working on a book about architect Sim Bruce Richards.