USModernist Radio
 

Here are all our past shows

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.

Past and upcoming architecture guests include 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 include China Forbes, Judy Carmichael, Toni Tennille, Stacey Kent, Jane Monheit, Jennifer Warnes, Ann Hampton Callaway, Lucy Wijnands, Monika Ryan, Diane Schuur, Noel Paul Stookey, Brenda Lee, Lenore Raphael and Howard Alden, Eliane Elias,  Halie Loren, Marilyn Scott, Cheryl Bentyne, Janis Siegel, Storm Large, Kate Earl, Nneena Freelon, Darius Brubeck, Maria Maldaur, Claire Martin, Robin McKelle, Bria Skonberg, Sophie Milman, Lucy Woodward, Heather Rigdon, Tierney Sutton, Diana Panton, Don Most, Judy Carmichael, Linda Eder, Peter Lamb and the Wolves.

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Presented By

Host and Executive Producer George Smart HAIA, 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 19 local, state, and national awards, He appears in the 2020 architecture documentary Frey II and the 2024 architecture documentary New England Modernism, both by Jake Gorst.

Announcer, co-host, and engineer 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.

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Upcoming Episodes

Nov 25 #380/Coastal Modernism: Ed Niles + Ralph Choeff + Musical Guest Chris Bennett

Nov 18 #379/Moving Matsumoto: Melinda and Andy Knowles + Architect Birthdays with James Biber + Musical Guest Allegra Levy

In late 2023, new owners of a classic George Matsumoto Modernist house took out a demolition permit. Usually, that’s the end of the road, but Melinda and Andy Knowles stepped up and persuaded those owners to delay demolition - so they could move the house seven miles across town, where it’s been wonderfully restored on a new site, next to their existing midcentury Modernist house.  And in the best architecture book of the year, architect and author, James Biber. Later on, musical guest Allegra Levy.

Nov 11 378/Texas + California:  Katherine O'Rourke + Ben Koush + Michael Webb

We’ll talk today about Texas and California, two of our most populous states that could not be more different, with Kathryn O’Rourke and Ben Koush, authors of Home, Heat, Money, God: Texas and Modern Architecture; and Michael Webb, author of California Houses: Creativity in Context.

Nov 4 #377/Christopher Wilson + Ken MacIntyre + Musical Guest Emilie-Claire Barlow

Talking architecture with architects can be incomprehensible, especially for people who aren’t architects.  Today we talk with two noted populists who make architecture understandable and enjoyable - architect and professor Christopher Wilson, and journalist and architourist Ken MacIntyre of modtraveler.net.  Later on, musical guest Emilie-Claire Barlow.

Oct 28 #376/Landscape Architecture: Chris LaGuardia + Michael Van Valkenburgh + Musical Guest Timothy Nishimoto of Pink Martini

Landscape architects are the ninjas of the design world, silently orchestrating beauty around buildings while you’re too busy staring at your phone. They decide whether that park bench is in the sun or shade, the exact curve of a sidewalk, and how to make an average building look extraordinary.  They’re the ones who make sure your city doesn’t feel like a concrete jungle and that your suburban sprawl doesn’t completely lose touch with nature. Today we’ll talk with two exceptional landscape architects, Chris LaGuardia and Michael Van Valkenburgh. Later, music with Pink Martini’s Timothy Nishimoto.

Oct 21 #375/Housing The Nation: Alexander Gorlin + Victoria Newhouse + Musical Guest Nicole Lvoff

In nearly every major city, housing the homeless is a major problem.  Since the defunding of residential mental health programs in Reagan era, the dramatic cost of housing, and other cutbacks in the welfare safety net, America has created a huge population of people with problems who have nowhere to live except outside.  Even with the better ideas, there’s a generally well-funded, lawyered-up constituency that’s going to fight it.  Joining us today are the authors of the new book Housing the Nation, architect Alexander Gorlin and architectural historian Victoria Newhouse.  Later on, music from Nicole Lvoff.

Oct 14 #374/Boots On the Ground: Julianne Patterson + Benjamin Briggs + Ben Thomas + Musical Guest Helena Redman

Where does the hard work get done in modernist preservation? State and local preservation groups show up at long, boring, and ridiculously bureaucratic public meetings, week after week, sometimes for years.  They get historic preservation tax credits passed in most states, and they monitor everything from development to the preservation easements we talk about frequently.  Joining us in the studio are two of these heroes, Preservation Durham’s Julianne Patterson and Preservation North Carolina’s Benjamin Briggs. From Chicago, we’ll talk with Ben Thomas, Executive Director of the Society of Architectural Historians; later, music from Durham's Helena Redman.