USModernist Radio — Modernist Architecture Podcast
USModernist® Radio is underwritten by The Brent R. Harris Charitable Trust, restorer of several Modernist houses including Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, the E. Fay Jones Conservancy, preserving Jones properties in northwest Arkansas, and by Diane Bald and The Budman Family, restoring significant architecture in Toronto, Los Angeles, Malibu and Palm Springs.
Listen to one of America's top-rated architecture podcasts as the USModernist® Radio crew talks and laughs with fascinating people who own, create, love, and hate Modernist architecture, the most controversial houses and buildings in the world. DWELL rated USModernist Radio as the #2 architecture podcast, with Atomic Ranch putting us at #1!
Here are all our past shows! Or listen to them straight from our library.
Past architecture guests Jeanne Gang, Bjarke Ingels, Daniel Libeskind, Helena Arahuete, Barbara Bestor, Moshe Safdie, Tom Kundig, Harry Bates, Peter Bohlin, Alan Hess, Peter Gluck, Robert Rubin, Blair Kamin, Barry Bergdoll, Myron Goldfinger, Kenneth Frampton, Katie Swenson, Bob Ivy, Jen Masengarb, Angie Brooks + Larry Scarpa, Gisue Hariri, Sekou Cooke, Alexandra Lange, Paul Goldberger, Inga Saffron, Jim Olson, Sarah Susanka, Raymond and Dion Neutra, Eric and Susan Saarinen, and many more.
Past musical guests Pink Martini, Ari Shapiro, China Forbes, Madeleine Peyroux, Judy Carmichael, Toni Tennille, Stacey Kent, Jane Monheit, Nnenna Freelon, Diane Schuur, Noel Paul Stookey, Brenda Lee, Jennifer Warnes, Ann Hampton Callaway, Lucy Wijnands, Monika Ryan, Lenore Raphael and Howard Alden, Eliane Elias, Halie Loren, Marilyn Scott, Cheryl Bentyne, Janis Siegel, Storm Large, Kate Earl, Darius Brubeck, Maria Muldaur, Claire Martin, Robin McKelle, Bria Skonberg, Sophie Milman, Lucy Woodward, Heather Rigdon, Tierney Sutton, Diana Panton, Don Most, Linda Eder, and Peter Lamb and the Wolves.
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Presented By
Host and Executive Producer
Announcer, co‑host, and engineerGeorge Smart, one dark and stormy night in 2007, started what has become USModernist®, the largest open digital nonprofit educational archive for Modernist residential design in the world. George and his intrepid team of wildly dedicated volunteers and woefully underpaid staff have won 20 local, state, and national awards. He appears in the architecture documentaries Frey II and New England Modernism by acclaimed filmmaker Jake Gorst.
Tom Guild, legendary Raleigh FM DJ, grew up in a Durham Modernist house. He was on WRDU and WQDR back when humans actually played vinyl records over the airwaves using something called radio. Over the years, Tom recorded and mixed hours of top-notch audio including Porsche By Design for the NC Museum of Art. He met Mick Jagger. He has not met Frank Gehry. The security code for the show's recording studio, SoundTrax, is 8675309. The podcast began in 2015, based in Raleigh NC, and has done remotes from Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Sarasota, London, New York, and New Canaan CT.
Daniella Ohad + Shawna Glazier + Brittainy Williamson + Jeremy Moore + Musical Guest Alex Bryson
Design historian Daniella Ohad returns. Then three Phoenix realtors who sell Modernist houses: Shawna Glazier and Brittainy Williamson of beSpoke Real Estate, hosts of the Modern Home Mastermind podcast, and Jeremy Moore of Compass. Later on, Alex Bryson.
Todd Saunders + Sekou Cooke + Wim de Wit + Musical Guest Emma Smith
Todd Saunders, the Newfoundland-born architect in Norway behind the Fogo Island Inn. Sekou Cooke, architect and author of Hip-Hop Architecture. Wim de Wit, the longtime architecture and design curator at the Getty Research Institute. Later on, British jazz singer Emma Smith.
Gligor Tashkovich + Musical Guest Casey Abrams
Gligor Tashkovich on his father, Vuko Tashkovich, the architect-builder behind a remarkable cluster of Modernist houses in Pound Ridge, New York. Later on, singer and bassist Casey Abrams, from American Idol and Postmodern Jukebox.
Gabriele Neri + Jenna McKnight + Mack Paul + Musical Guest Champian Fulton
Italian architectural historian Gabriele Neri on his new book about New Yorker cartoonist Alan Dunn, who skewered modern architecture and the modern city for half a century. Dezeen’s Jenna McKnight on her new book Design: Mid-Century Modern, from Copenhagen to California. Raleigh land use attorney Mack Paul on Miracle Road, the story of how Research Triangle Park came to be. Later on, jazz pianist and vocalist Champian Fulton.
Kristine Hansen + Liz Gruening + Stefan Baumeister + Musical Guest Tahira Clayton
Kristine Hansen, author of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wisconsin, is back with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Illinois, a guide to Wright’s most prolific state and the people who care for his privately owned houses. Liz Gruening, the Toronto blogger behind The Vintage Inn, on vintage and mid-century living. Plus Stefan Baumeister. Later on, jazz vocalist Tahira Clayton.
Greg Werkheiser + Belinda Stewart + Jennifer Baughn + Jen Duncan + Peter Reed + Musical Guest Alex Bryson
Greg Werkheiser of Cultural Heritage Partners is the lawyer who uses preservation law to protect historic places and sacred sites. Then Fountainhead, Frank Lloyd Wright’s house in Jackson, Mississippi: architect Belinda Stewart is leading its preservation, and Jennifer Baughn, co-author of Buildings of Mississippi, is its new curator. Jen Duncan of the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies and former MoMA curator Peter Reed take us inside America Abroad, their exhibition on art, architecture, and diplomacy. Later on, London jazz pianist and singer Alex Bryson.
Reboot: Beatriz Colomina + Sandra Costa
Princeton architectural historian Beatriz Colomina on how Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine popularized Modernist furniture to America, plus Playboy bunny-turned-designer Sandra Costa, who creates bachelor pads all over the world.
Gunny Harboe + Isabel Strauss + Vin Cipolla + Mark Römisch + Musical Guest Rosie Webber
Gunny Harboe is the architect behind decades of Frank Lloyd Wright restorations. Then, the winner of one of the smallest architecture competitions ever, the Bauhaus Bathroom, Isabel Strauss, with Historic New England’s CEO Vin Cipolla. Mark Römisch shares his years documenting New England’s hidden Bauhaus houses. And closing us out, Rosie Webber, the viral vocalist and impressionist turned cabaret headliner.
Vishaan Chakrabarti + Christiano Sampaio + Musical Guest Carmen Bradford
Vishaan Chakrabarti is the architect leading the $7 billion redesign of Penn Station. Christiano Sampaio is the Los Angeles broker who built a boutique brokerage around lofts, but we’re talking to him about a different kind of property: houses in movies. And closing us out, Carmen Bradford, the jazz vocalist who talked her way into Count Basie’s band, and still plays with them today.
John Boccardo + Derek Esplin + Christine Madrid French + Mark Lamster + Eyal Einik + Musical Guest Monika Ryan
Most architecture fans love the Hitchcock film North By Northwest. Guests John Boccardo, Derek Esplin, and Christine Madrid French turned Hitchcock’s fictional Vandamm House into a $45 million Modernist marvel in Utah. Mark Lamster, the newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner works to save Dallas City Hall from demolition. Eyal Einik is an architect-turned-developer transforming one of those Holiday Inn corncob buildings of the 1960’s into a new Hotel Indigo. Later on, returning musical guest Monika Ryan.
Jim Stevens + Max Strang + Philip Kennicott + Musical Guest Rick Maltese
Jim Stevens is the brand new dean of the University of Arkansas’s Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design and we caught him on Day 1. Max Strang in Florida talks about his latest house. Philip Kennicott, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art and architecture critic of The Washington Post, talks about music, mourning, ballrooms, and Bach. Later on, musical guest Rick Maltese.